


Gracefallen

by surreallis



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M, Going Rogue, Het, Non-Graphic Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-19
Updated: 2010-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-09 00:09:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surreallis/pseuds/surreallis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the day she breaks, the sun is shining. It doesn't seem right; that the world can still spin on while another kid is abused and her heart breaks just a little bit more. Even Elliot can't catch her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> For Michelle, my best SVU friend, who lets me blather on about these two and who thinks Meloni and Hargitay are just as hot as I do. :)

[]

[olivia]

The day she runs is unremarkable. It's a day like any other day, except, of course, that everything goes horribly wrong. The sky is blue with a smattering of white clouds. The air is cool, but there is still the occasional warm wind that blows across the bay. People still walk the streets on their way to work. Coffee still sells. Kids are still abused behind closed doors where they can't be found.

And she is determined, finally, that one kid will _not_ go back behind that door. Ever again.

[]

But first…

[]

She always takes care of other people. This seems to be A Thing with her. She's not sure why, really. Probably something to do with an alcoholic mother. She doesn't like to think too hard on it, because it's not something she thinks she can change.

Or maybe she doesn't want to.

Sometimes blindness can be a blessing. Sometimes it's about coping.

[]

It's a long, long winter. It's one gray day after another, and the cold never seems to leave her bones. The witnesses, the crimes, the court cases, in some ways even the vics, seem to run together. She goes through the motions, but in many ways she feels like she's hibernating.

If Elliot sees her falling behind, he doesn't say anything. His gaze has not been on her lately, but it hasn't been off of her either.

There are times she wishes she hadn't given him so much of herself.

[]

Their partnership is comfortable these days. In a way that kind of breaks her heart. The time has flown by so quickly that she didn't see it pass. They're past the days when they'd disagree and go at each other like the wind and the sea. Battering until they were both tired and moving in the same direction again.

Nowadays people have given up. They are a package deal. _Oh, let them be._

They are considered unchangeable.

Even Cragen has thrown up his hands and lets them sit on that thin blue line.

There was a time that she would have considered this a victory. But now she feels left behind.

[]

[elliot]

It isn't that he doesn't notice. He does. It's just that the two of them are so… constant. A lot of things change on him and he doesn't notice until one day things have clicked too far that he can't _not_ notice. And Olivia is the sort who won't tell him, won't tell anyone, until it's ripped out of her. To be honest, he doesn't feel particularly entitled to know about her personal life anymore, and he knows this is partially his fault.

The winter is a time of change, and he can feel the different channels of his life sliding past each other, one up, one down, but so very, very slowly. It isn't a quick fall, like the last time Kathy left him. (They'd both left him, once. They'd both come back as well.) It's a slow slipping down that he can't quite grasp.

Kathy doesn't get angry anymore and it doesn't bother him. They've been slowly letting go, and there's no freefall this time. He just walks away.

[]

[olivia]

"Would you do things differently?" Elliot asks her one day as they sit in the bar after court and have a beer. "If you could go back?"

She has a feeling he's thinking about something specific, but she can't decide which of the million mistakes they've made might be bothering him.

"Yes," she says, and leaves it at that.

"Me too," he says. And then he looks at her and won't look away, and there's something in his eyes that makes them look gray, like the winter sky.

The names go through her head like flashcards: Plummer, Gitano, Rickett, Schenkel, Sennet, Harris, Bushido. The moments in their lives, in their job, that have bound them together. They remember the moments with names now. With a dry throat and a quickening of the heart. With a fleeting second of eye contact that goes deeper than the ocean.

For a moment there's a spark there, like the old them, and her heart trips up.

And then Munch is clapping them both on the back, and Elliot is laughing, and they both switch to bourbon.

In the morning she's pretty sure she only imagined it.

[]

And then…

[]

She is not supposed to promise things. She knows this. Justice is never a done deal. But she is really tired of assholes like Troy Watson getting away with their shit. She is even more tired of treating it like a big game of Pin the Tail on the Abuser. (Will she pin it correctly? Will the Abuser go down? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen…)

When Grace, 8 years old, sits at her interrogation table and cries and says, "I don't want to go home!" Olivia promises.

"You don't have to, Grace. Never again."

Elliot doesn't bat an eye.

Cragen tightens his jaw and holds her gaze as she walks out of the room.

[]

[elliot]

"The kid is lying," Troy insists. And even if Elliot was inclined to believe him-which he isn't-the smirk on his face makes Elliot want to punch it right off him.

"Why would she do that?"

"Because I make her follow the house rules, and her mother backs me up. She wants her mother to dump me."

"Do the 'house rules' include night-time visits to her bed for a little under-the-covers tag?"

Troy snorts. "Don't be ridiculous."

"I don't find sexual assault ridiculous at all, _Troy_."

Troy eyes him. "Well, then, I guess you'll just have to prove it." He smirks.

Olivia moves so fast that Elliot barely has time to react. All he registers is Troy's chair going backwards and Olivia's fingers around his neck, and she's swearing in a voice that means she's lost it, and Troy is laughing almost frighteningly hard, and Elliot almost has to hurt her to drag her off of him.

Cragen and Fin rush in to grab Troy, and Elliot drags Olivia through the doorway, and she fights him all the way.

"What the fuck?" he shouts as he hauls her up against the viewing room wall, and then his anger is spent, because he feels broad-sided and it's Olivia and she leans away from him and her hands are in fists and they both have their boiling points.

"He did it, Elliot," she says, and her voice is soft and scratchy and it scares him.

"I know," he says. "I know."

"She's not going back there," Olivia states. And now her voice is calm.

Elliot doesn't reply to that. He hopes not. "Olivia," he says, softly, and he leans close to her against the wall, so only she can hear him. "You can't do that again. What if we'd been filming that? He's going to milk that for as much as it's worth, and Fin and Cragen are going to have to witness." He says nothing about himself, because lying for her is a given in his mind.

She snorts at that, and she glances at him with a wry expression, and he isn't sure if she's just frustrated with the legal system or making some remark on the irony of getting behavior advice from him of all people.

"You ever feel," she asks, quietly. "As if nothing we do makes a difference?"

And that's when he really feels how far she's slipped.

[]

[olivia]

He tells her, as they stand outside the courthouse having coffee as the jury is being selected for the Watson case.

"I'm getting divorced."

She absorbs it through a haze, frowning, and then suddenly she wants to laugh. "What, again?" She snorts.

"No," he says, and his face is that intense sort of serious he does when everything feels too real to him. "This is it."

She stares at him. "Elliot!" she exclaims, and it's a protest of a sort.

He looks away from her and shifts on his feet. He stays silent.

"I, uh… I thought…" She doesn't know what to say. She doesn't even know what she _feels_. She's angry at him, but she's sympathetic. She's not surprised, but she's sad. And she hates that little spark of excitement that leaps up into her veins.

"We were right the first time. It should have happened then. I just… needed a slower separation I guess."

He always has, she thinks. Change is something he's rarely prepared for.

"Okay," she says, because she's as tired as he is of this particular fight. And this thing between them might have been complicated and not always innocent, but she can honestly tell herself she tried. She did the right thing. Whether he can tell himself the same thing she doesn't know.

"It's going to take a while, with the kids and all. I don't…" He stops and he sighs, and he looks tired but he doesn't look broken like the last time.

"You need anything?" she asks, because it feels corny to say 'I'll be here for you, buddy.' And she likes to think he knows already.

He looks up at her, and there's something there in his gaze that sends her stomach flipping, even though they've known each other for over a decade now.

"No," he says, shaking his head, and he gives her a smile that she would almost categorize as nervous. "Gotta do this myself, you know? I don't want you all…" He pauses, and she watches as he struggles for the right words. "I don't want you all messed up in this, Olivia. I need you to stay away from it."

She's hurt at first, until she realizes what he's doing. How he's drawing a line between himself and his old life, and he wants her firmly on this side of that line. She knows him well enough to know that he thinks of her as something that belongs to him. In a life where he has rarely done anything purely for himself, she is the one thing he considers solely his. Well… her and the job.

It's been disconcerting and attractive in turns over the years.

"Okay," she says. She loves his family as much as either they or she would allow, but her allegiance has always been clear.

"Okay." He nods.

[]

And now…

[]

The jury doesn't buy it. None of it. It was always going to be a hard case, but Grace's mom won't turn against Troy. They see it all the time, but it's always been hard to convince a jury. The child psychologist they use is usually on her game, but even to Olivia her testimony seems weak. They use every technicality they can, and they make Olivia sound like a harpy from the Inquisition.

Olivia sits in the galley and listens to the blood rush in her ears as the judge declares Troy free to go and Grace returned to her mother. She's numb with the disappointment, until she looks up in the melee of the courtroom to find Watson staring at her. In the rush of people he holds her gaze and smiles a chilling, triumphant smile. And then he wags his tongue at her in an obscene gesture.

And the anger jumps up inside of her like a bonfire.

[]

[elliot]

"He'll fuck up, Olivia," Elliot tells her, watching as she paces back and forth in the hallway. "We'll get him again."

She shakes her head at that, and she wrings her hands the way she always does. He doesn't even think she realizes she does it. "That's too late," she says. "That's way too late."

He feels it too, that desperate disappointment. That urgency because they are sure Watson is a pedophile fuckhead and they have to send Grace back to hell. _She shouldn't have promised_, he thinks. _Goddamn it, Olivia, why did you promise?_

She's not even listening to him. He wants to grab her by the back of the neck and drag her out of there and maybe buy her a drink and just talk to her, but there are parent-teacher conferences at the school tonight, and he's still adjusting to being Elliot Stabler, soon-to-be-divorced dad.

"Olivia," he finally says, and she glances at him. "Are you going to be okay?"

She hesitates at that. She furrows her brow, like he's speaking an unknown language. It chills him.

"Go, Elliot," she says, quietly. "Your kids need you."

So, he does. But with a pressure in his chest that won't dissipate, no matter how much he tries to forget.

[]

[olivia]

There was so much more she should have done. So much more she could have done. There had to be. There was no way an arrogant fuck like Watson didn't leave evidence behind somewhere, and she's furious with herself at her failure to find it.

Her outbreak in the interrogation room didn't help.

She doesn't sleep that night, thinking about Grace and the way she'll have to walk back into that house with Watson the next day. About how she'd promised the girl she'd never have to go back. About all the things she should have done in the investigation. About how it doesn't matter because they can't even try Watson again for this case. They have to wait until he commits a new crime in order to start over, and considering how this one went he might very well _kill_ Grace next time to keep her quiet.

For the first time in a long time, she cries in the darkness in her bed. Silently, because she's learned to keep it in, but she's never been able to stop the tears.

[]

When she finally gets up the next morning, without waking because she'd never gone to sleep, she doesn't actually know she's going to do it. She just knows that Grace is being picked up at 9:00 a.m. by an officer of the court to be returned to her mother and Watson. And she thinks that she has to go and see Grace and explain things to her.

She has to apologize.

She has to make sure Grace has some way to talk to her if-when-it all starts happening again. And maybe, maybe, maybe Olivia can get there in time.

She doesn't bother calling Cragen. She figures he'll know she needs some time. He'll cut her some leeway, because he's always been good like that.

She drives and she looks at the blue sky and the white clouds and she rolls down the windows and feels the warmth of the sun and cool of the breeze, and the unremarkable nature of it all kind of pisses her off. Like this is all just par for the course.

[]

And this is how it happens…

[]

She gets there and the social worker is dealing with press and paperwork and phone calls, and she looks at Olivia, surprised, and says, "Detective Benson? I thought they'd send someone else to take Grace back, considering your history with Troy Watson."

And Olivia sees the opening and she does pause, just for a moment, suspended there at the top of the arc, her career and her life and her freedom still intact and hers alone.

And then she plunges.

"They thought it would be good departmental relations," she lies, and she shrugs.

The social worker shrugs back, and then checks her watch. "You're early. I don't have the paperwork finished yet." She points at a staircase. "Go ahead up and see Grace, and I'll finish up." And then she walks down a hallway and into another room.

So, Olivia goes.

She goes up and she smiles at Grace, and she tries to talk in her most soothing voice, and she takes Grace's backpack and they walk downstairs and no one is there. So, they walk outside, and there's still no one there, and she puts Grace in the backseat and puts a seatbelt on her, and then she climbs in the driver's side, and she pauses.

There is still time, she realizes. Still time to walk Grace back inside and let the system continue on its way. There is still time to save her career and her life and walk back into the precinct and sit across from Elliot and look into his blue eyes and share coffee with him and let him comfort her.

And part of her wants to do just that. But then Grace starts to cry, and she puts the key in the ignition, and she says, "It's okay."

She drives off before anyone notices, but she knows it won't be long. She does not have much time, and the first thing she has to do is ditch her car. And then she thinks about Elliot and she realizes that the car is the _second_ thing she has to do.

She pulls out her phone at a red light and it's just long enough to tap out the words.

And then she does the third thing on her short, very sudden list.

She disappears.

[]


	2. Two

[]

And while she is gone…

[]

[elliot]

He is worried about her.

She is taking this case very hard, and he's not sure how to help her. They have always had hard cases, and it takes time. _She'll get over it_, he thinks, and then he realizes he's repeating it to himself, like he's trying to convince himself.

He closes one report and picks up another, sighing as he writes and glancing at her empty desk. She is late today, and it's not that surprising, but it makes him nervous and fidgety. They've been doing this job a long, long time. Longer than the vast majority of SVU detectives ever have. And there is always some small part of his mind that wonders when the last straw will come. For both of them.

His phone beeps quietly on the desk next to the stack of files, and he glances at it and then away. He looks out toward the hallway. It's still early enough to be fairly empty, and she is not there walking toward him with that swaggering, tough stride she has. He wonders if he should call her or if he should give her space.

His phone beeps again.

He finally picks it up and glances at the text, feeling a bit of relief when he sees Liv's name. And then he reads the text: _I'm sorry, El. Please don't be angry. I worry about you._

He reads it twice, confused, and then his stomach drops.

He calls, but it goes right to voice mail. He calls again. And again. And again and again, and she is not picking up, so he leaves a message telling her to call him back and demanding to know what's going on, and then he looks up and there are three suits walking into Cragen's office, and they all glance at him with suspicious eyes, and he feels a ripple of panic.

They close the door behind them though, and he is left to sit in the silence and stare at her message, and he drops his phone and tilts his head into his hands and he thinks, _Oh God, Liv, what have you done?_

[]

Cragen calls him into his office ten minutes later, and he gets the whole story. Well… what they know of the story so far anyway. Olivia took Grace and disappeared.

"The _hell_ she did!" He explodes. Because it is Olivia, and she didn't do this.

He keeps refusing, even as they lay it out for him. Even as Cragen tells him to settle his ass down. Even as the suits eye him up and down and their eyes turn to stone.

It has to be a mistake. But even in his shock, he is thinking about how she's been acting the past few months, the past few weeks. The text.

The text. He deflates.

"What do you know about this?" Cragen demands.

And he has to shrug. He truly feels broadsided by her abandonment, so it's not hard to fake, but he's still in protective mode when it comes to Olivia. And maybe he always will be. "She was sure Watson was guilty," he says. "I knew she was taking it hard, but I… I didn't think…" He can't even put his racing thoughts into words, and Cragen softens.

"Did she call you, Elliot?"

"I, uh…" He's lost for a moment, but he realizes they'll dump his phones, and keep dumping them, as a matter of course. He's her partner. "She texted me about half an hour ago." And he shows them.

They are skeptical, and it angers him, even if he understands it. But he hasn't had time to really think this through, and, no, he can't tell them where she'd go. No, he didn't help her.

"For God's sake," he finally says to Cragen. "You know her, Cap. She won't come within a mile of me now. She wouldn't want to put me at risk like that. Not with my kids."

And Cragen does know, he can see.

The IAB isn't as sure, and they escort him into an empty briefing room where he spends the rest of the afternoon answering all of their questions and feeling so shell-shocked that he can barely restrain himself.

He can't believe their world has exploded in this way.

[]

He doesn't really believe it until the next morning when Olivia doesn't come in again. And then he sits there in the calm before the storm and he lets it sink in.

Fuck.

[]

They can't keep it out of the press.

Watson is almost gleeful in his fury. He parades around from network to network, making impassioned pleas on camera for Olivia to return his stepdaughter, and he immediately amasses a flock of lawyers to sue the city, and Elliot watches him in all the quiet moments when he thinks no one else is looking. Watson is smug and manipulative and a little over-hysterical, and there is a fear clinging to him that has nothing to do with the disappearance of his stepdaughter. It is deeper than that.

And Elliot realizes that no matter how angry he is at Olivia, she is probably right.

A week passes and she doesn't contact anyone. They find her car and they trace her phone, but the last activity was her text to him. She took several thousand dollars from her checking account the day she disappeared, and then those went dead too. She hasn't used a credit card at all. She knows how to disappear and stay gone.

Cragen pulls him, of course, that first week. He sits in the office and he talks to the IAB, and he withstands the way they dump his phones and search his house and question him again and again, trying to trip him up. They follow him when he goes home and they sit outside of his new apartment, and he's suddenly very glad he and Kathy decided to separate when they did.

He knows why she won't contact him, and he doesn't disagree with her reasoning, but… God, he wants to talk to her. He wants to know where she is. He wants to know she's okay. He wants her to just. Come. Back.

His mind keeps turning things over. The way she acted that day in court, when she was pacing and he'd had to run out to go to parent-teacher conferences. The places she might be right now. Ways he could get in touch without tipping off the IAB. That maybe if she comes back right now, maybe everything will be okay and she can still be a cop and still be his partner and he will see her again.

But that is not an option, as Alex so sympathetically points out to him, more than once. "It doesn't matter now, Elliot. I'm sorry." She has her arms folded over her chest, and she looks at him with sorrow, and he feels so angry that he doesn't even care that all of them feel sorry for him.

"Is there any way to get her out of this?" he finally asks.

Alex at least takes the time to think about it. "It's unlikely. Even if the original case is proven correct and Watson is convicted, Olivia broke the law. She will go to jail. There will be no avoiding that."

And he understands why she did what she did, but he is still angry with her. He wants to rail at her for being a vigilante, something she's always taken him to task for when his temper has gotten the best of him. He wants to be angry because she didn't trust the system that she works for, and because she's breaking the law.

But he can't, because mostly he's angry that she left him. That she didn't tell him. That he's finally getting divorced and moving on with his life and he was feeling good about it. He is… Okay, yes, he is angry because he had thought that once he was free of all his entanglements that maybe, probably, he and Olivia would have started something. Something beyond partnership that would have made him very, very happy.

And now she's blown that all to hell.

And it really, really hurts.

[]

When he slides his key into the lock of her apartment door and opens it, he still half expects to see her sitting there on the sofa.

She's not.

The apartment is dark, and her curtains are open, letting the moonlight shine in. He turns the kitchen light on but leaves the rest off. Not like it'll make a difference. He knows he was followed, and he didn't try to lose them. He shouldn't be here, and he's not sure how much time he'll have before they burst in and drag him out and question him again. He just needs… He just needs to know.

There's clutter, and he realizes it's from the search. It's not as bad as he'd expected, and he figures Cragen probably had something to do with that. He'd plastered himself to the IAB officers in the first few days after Olivia disappeared.

Elliot slides his gaze slowly around the room, and it just all looks normal.

When he opens the refrigerator, there's an unopened half-gallon of skim milk and a bag with three apples in it.

_Not planned_, a voice says in his head. _She didn't plan this and she didn't want to leave and she didn't keep it from you._

It's a relief in a way, although it doesn't ease the painful ball of tension in his chest that he can't seem to shake.

He walks around a bit, but all he sees is proof of her impulsiveness, hints of her life, remnants of the search. Her jacket hanging on the back of a kitchen stool. Her cereal bowl in the sink. Her clothes piled on the bed where the searching detectives dumped them as they emptied her drawers.

He wonders then if he's going to be boxing her stuff up for storage if she doesn't come back. If she goes to prison. If she… decides to make a stand.

He feels a cold shiver somewhere deep.

There's a picture of them together on a shelf in her living room. The same one Kurt Moss threw in his face the day he'd gone to bully Moss into backing Olivia up with the IAB. Moss had seen through him though.

_You two have worked together for a long time. There must be a reason why she didn't tell you about me._

Yeah. That's about the size of it. He'd felt a little blindsided that day too, by the secrets she was keeping.

He takes the picture to the window and leans against the wall, looking out. He can see the car that's been tailing him parked half a block down. It's taking them a while to make their move.

He breathes slowly, and heat burns behind his eyes. _Jesus, Olivia… _

When the door opens behind him, he tenses and waits, but he refuses to move.

A hand lands on his shoulder lightly and grips, and then it's Fin's voice, soft, in the silence. "Elliot, you know you aren't supposed to be here."

Elliot turns his head slightly. "Yeah. I'm going." He doesn't move though, and neither does Fin, and he thinks that someone in the FBI must feel for him if they called the precinct rather than taking him down themselves.

It's quiet for a moment, and then Fin asks, "How're you doing?"

He and Fin don't get along on the best of days, but he feels solid with Fin right now. No matter how far apart they get, Fin has always had his back.

Elliot shakes his head, shrugs, keeps shaking his head helplessly. He doesn't even know what to say. How to explain himself.

Fin releases his shoulder and leans against the wall on the other side of the window, his face shadowed in the darkness. "That girl's always had some balls on her."

Elliot nods absently and watches a couple walk hand-in-hand down the street. "She's really gone," he finally says, and he's a little surprised at the roughness of his own voice. "She really did this."

"I know, man," Fin says, quietly.

Elliot shakes his head and then presses weary fingers against his forehead. "Shit," he swears. "I've had a lot of partners over the years, but Olivia…" he trails away. "Olivia just…" He swallows.

"Yeah," Fin agrees. "I know."

"No," Elliot says, because there's a whole level of hurt inside him that no one knows about. That he can't even tell because it's not supposed to be there. "You don't."

"Yeah," Fin says, voice soft but hard at the same time. He grips Elliot's shoulder again. "I do," he says, vehemently.

Elliot meets his gaze, and it's all there in Fin's face. Sympathy and support and understanding and knowledge. Maybe he and Olivia had always been more transparent than they thought. Maybe Fin was just that good. Maybe, maybe.

He feels his face heat up and his eyes get wet, and he figures Fin will understand that too. "I'm getting divorced," he says, quietly. "I told Olivia last month."

Fin's expression shifts. He sighs. "Shit," he swears, resigned. "Figures."

Elliot snorts and then sniffs, clearing his throat. _Yeah_, he thinks. _Yeah._

Shit.

[]

It's only a ghost…

[]

[dean]

Dean Porter is not a man who is home very often. He likes it that way. He doesn't like sitting in his apartment with nothing to do. So he works a lot. He likes being out there, on the streets and further, working out the ways to catch bad guys.

It makes him feel like he's doing something important, like he matters.

It can be lonely though, and finding someone who is willing to be as lonely as he is when he's gone, well… He hasn't managed to find that someone yet. And truth be told, he knows he isn't the best people person. He can create some charm by the book, but more than one girlfriend has walked away from him when he wouldn't put them first in his life.

At one time he had really thought Olivia might be the woman for him. She was as obsessed as he was, and as driven, and he'd thought that the two of them together could have beaten the odds.

And it wasn't that she'd seemed _uninterested_, just… He'd run right up against a wall in her heart, and he'd been flummoxed.

Until he'd met Stabler.

And he'd stood with them both in upstate New York, on a gray, cold winter's day, Olivia's newfound brother between them all, and he'd watched the way the partners had looked at each other, spoken to each other, and he'd realized exactly what that wall was.

It had made him want to kick something, because, shit, man.

He'd gone to bat for her in front of the review board because he'd been complicit in her crime. Because he'd liked her. Still liked her. Because she inspired something better in him. He'd never known anyone who fought for the people they loved like Olivia did. He'd thrown her an obvious clue, and she'd turned him away, but he'd felt it then… The wisp of a chance.

Stabler's life is complicated. Maybe too complicated to ever really set the man free.

When he'd come up against her again in the Terri Banes case, he hadn't set out to pull the rug out from under her. The fact is he has real feelings for her. He just keeps a very solid wall between his personal feelings and his professional duty. She maybe didn't quite know that about him, and he's sorry about that. He has a feeling that she's more like him than she cares to admit. It's just… Well, she hasn't quite surrendered to it all yet.

So, he's surprised when he hears about Olivia taking off with an abused kid. And yet he's not surprised at all. She's always inspired the weirdest internal dichotomy within him.

He's really, truly surprised though, when he opens his door on a Tuesday night, eight days after she runs, and finds her standing there, alone.

"Hey," she says, softly, her gaze skittering way from him guiltily.

He just stares at her for a moment, because everything inside of him has frozen up. She glances nervously down the hall, and he closes his mouth tight so he doesn't say anything he shouldn't. His apartment is clean of bugs, but he can't control the hallway. He grabs her by the shoulder and yanks her through his door, closing it quickly behind her.

"Olivia," he says, keeping his voice low. "What the _fuck_?"

Her gaze sweeps around his apartment and she says, "I'm taking a chance here, Dean. That you're not going to turn me in."

It's a big chance, considering they've barely talked since he told her their feelings didn't matter and then walked out of the one six with their perp in tow.

He'd talked to her once since then, when they'd run into each other in the courthouse, waiting for trials in the same room. He'd expected her to rage, or even to get an icy blow-off, but… she'd been soft and, yes, closed off too, but remarkably normal.

She could have just been trying to show him how little he'd affected her, but he knows she's not like that. She's not a player. Not with the people who know the woman behind the badge.

"I'm sorry," he'd said then, because he hadn't known what else to say. "I didn't want you to get caught in it."

She'd shrugged and then nodded and said, "Yeah." With a voice that was quiet and steady, and she'd made him ache.

Then Stabler had walked in and if looks could kill… Jesus.

Stabler had immediately started in, and Olivia had had to say his name three times before he'd listened, but after that they'd all existed in an uneasy silence. Well… he and Olivia had fidgeted and glanced at each other. Stabler had sprawled out on a chair next to Olivia-in a startlingly blatant show of protectiveness by placing himself between the two of them-and glared right at him until Dean was called to the stand.

He'd wanted to make a comment about a dog and his bone, but that would have hurt Olivia, and he hadn't really wanted to do that again. Stabler's inability to rise above his baser instincts wasn't her fault.

When he'd come back, they'd been gone and he hadn't seen her again.

Until now.

As far as he knows, neither the FBI nor the NYPD has remembered the connection between he and Olivia. And he's not going to remind them. He's paranoid enough to take measures to insure his privacy in his own apartment, and he's reasonably confident in Olivia's ability to avoid capture.

"You must really be desperate if you're willing to trust me," he says. He smirks a little, because he can't quite help it.

She gives a faint shrug, but her eyes are piercing in their intensity, and she meets his gaze head-on, making him swallow. She's judging his trustworthiness. She's remembering all their interactions, both good and bad, and she's assessing her risk.

"Where's the kid?" he asks her.

She just stares at him, silently, and he knows that was a stupid question.

"Right," he says. He sighs. "Why?" he asks instead.

She relaxes a bit. "Because she was being hurt, and I just couldn't do it, even one more time. I couldn't send one more kid back to parents I knew were abusing her and could continue to do so just because the justice system didn't work properly."

He sighs again and studies her. She looks tired but strong. She's wearing no make-up, and her hair is tied back, and her dark eyes are glittering, and she is still beautiful even though she's trying to hide it. "You're still in New York?" he asks, and he leaves it to her to understand why he's asking.

"Yeah," she says. "I'm staying in the state. I haven't even stepped over into Jersey."

"They'll find you eventually," he says. He's not trying to be a dick. It's the truth, and she must know it.

"I know," she says. "They don't have to look forever. Once Grace is safe, I'll come back and turn myself in."

He frowns. "Safe with who?"

Again, she just looks at him, silently.

"Right."

"I'm sorry," she says.

"Your partner is going crazy," he tells her.

And at that, she winces. "Have you seen him?" she asks, quietly.

He hasn't talked to Stabler since this happened, but he's been in the precinct and he's seen Stabler at a distance. The media focuses on him when they can find him, but Stabler's temper has quickly gotten a reputation. The cameras back off, but the man can't seem to do himself any favors.

"I've seen him," he says. "I haven't talked to him."

She exhales slowly and rubs at one hand with the other, and she chews her lip while staring at his carpet. "This is more important than the two of us. I trust him to understand that."

He feels various things then. Jealousy that Stabler has earned this woman's dedication and loyalty. An ache for Olivia and her career. Regret that he couldn't do things differently.

"It's hard," he says, slowly. "When there are personal feelings tied up in something like this. It's hard to see it objectively." There is a double-meaning there in his words, and he wills her to see it. That he'd have done things differently if he'd had a choice. There are too many things in this world bigger than she is. Bigger than him.

She holds his gaze for a long, silent moment and then looks away. "I told him not to be angry. I know he will be anyway, but… He just needs to move on."

He frowns at her and fixes her with a look that he hopes is telling her she's living in a dream world if she thinks that will happen. And she sighs and fidgets and looks away.

"Olivia," he finally says. "What are you doing here?"

She looks at him and swallows. "I need something," she says, hesitantly.

"Money?" He tries to figure out how much he could get for her and not draw attention to himself, just in case the FBI really does have his number.

"No," she retorts. "I'm fine there." She pauses and then she takes a deep breath. "I need you to get me the number of one of the members of the eco terrorist group I infiltrated in Oregon."

He blinks at her, speechlessly.

"Dean?" She furrows her brows, concerned.

"What," he finally asks, dryly. "Are you going to go live in the woods?"

She smiles for the first time since she's arrived. "Um, no," she says. "And I can't tell you why. I just… I just need you to trust me." Her eyes seem to darken then, and he sees the accusation plainly. _Like you didn't trust me._

He holds her gaze and tightens his jaw. "Olivia… that's asking a lot. You're asking me to help a fugitive and risk my job."

She nods. "I know. I'm sorry." She takes a deep breath. "You did it before, with my brother."

He sighs. He did do it before. Sometimes he wonders at the hold this woman has over him. He'd been lucky before, that he'd been able to spin the situation and squeak by on technicalities. That had been a quiet case though, something the media had never even picked up on. This? This is big.

"You can work around the law when you deem it necessary," she urges. "We both know that."

He paces a bit, running his hand over the back of his neck. He is glad that she trusts him enough to do this for her, and he is disheartened that she is willing to allow him to risk himself. So much like him…

"I need this," she says, quietly and insistently. "I might be able to find it myself over time, but I'm quickly running out of that, and we both know it."

He already knows he's going to do it, but he stands silently for a moment, hanging on to his last vestige of ignorance.

She sighs. "It's okay, Dean. If you can't do it, I understand, okay? But I'm going to go now, and I'd appreciate it if you gave me 10 minutes before calling it in."

She's already turning toward the door, when he reaches out to grab her shoulder. "Dramatic much?" he asks, and she smirks at him, just a bit, a little of that old Olivia Benson he remembers from Oregon shining through the weariness. "What's the name?"

"Hope Olson," she tells him. "With an 'o', not an 'e'."

"Okay," he says, and he shakes his head at her in faux aggravation. "The shit I do for you, Benson."

Her fingers find his and curl around them briefly and tightly. "I appreciate it."

"Yeah, yeah," he sighs dismissively, and he goes to his closet and brings a coat out that he never wears. He takes a cell phone out of the pocket and checks it. It's down to a half charge, but it's working. He hands it to her. "It's clean. No one knows I have it. It's registered to a fake name and address, and it has 30 minutes of prepaid time. I'll call you when I have the number."

She takes it and stares at him and says, "Jesus, Dean, you really are a fed through and through, aren't you?" But her eyes are grateful and there's a smile ghosting over her face.

"It's only got a half charge. Buy a cheap charger."

She huffs out a small laugh. "Okay."

And then suddenly he's sad, because she's right. This is it for her. It's her last case, her last bit of freedom, and she really won't be coming out of this okay.

For a moment he wants to urge her to keep running. He wants to help her. He wants to pack a bag and go with her and keep both her and the girl safe.

But he's never been one to lie to himself, and he knows damn well that it's not his place. That it would be jumping into a life where he doesn't belong.

"You should go," he says, softly.

She nods, pulling her jacket more tightly around her, and drawing up the hood. "Thank you," she says, and her eyes say more than he could ever hear.

It makes his chest ache.

And then she slips out, and he stands there staring at the door as it closes behind her, wondering when he's going to see her again.

[]


	3. Three

since you've been gone…

[elliot]

He's leaning against the wall in the hallway, next to the vending machines, drinking a diet soda when he sees Dean Porter. He'd wanted to get away from his desk. From sitting in the middle of the room while the other cops cast surreptitious glances his way. For once he's glad of his reputation for violence. It's kept him free of questions and left him alone to wallow.

A group of suits walk through on their way to the SVU, and he glances up in time to catch the dark gaze of Porter.

The FBI has arrived. He realizes they must think Olivia has left the state and he wonders if they have proof or just a suspicion. They're being tight-lipped with information where he's concerned, and though he knows the reasoning, he can't help feeling resentful and desperate.

Porter's gaze lingers overlong, and Elliot narrows his eyes. They've seen each other only once since the Banes case, and Elliot still feels angry. Angry that Porter fucked with their case, angry that he fucked with Olivia's mind and heart, angry that he saw Elliot's jealousy so damn clearly…

He doesn't move from his spot against the wall, and he doesn't avert his glare and Porter still meets his gaze until he starts to think the fed is trying to start something with him. But when he shoves off the wall with one shoulder, jaw tight, Porter finally turns his head and walks away.

Then he wonders…

He thinks Porter is a slippery, dishonest, two-faced asshole. But when you're on the run, sometimes a slippery, dishonest, two-faced asshole is just what you need…

Fin calls to him then, and he goes. And when he comes back, Porter is gone.

[]

[cragen]

Most of the time he doesn't think about drinking. He really doesn't. The days of sitting in an AA meeting five times a week are gone for him. He can go through his days, his life, even surrounded by alcohol and hard-drinking cops , and not feel the urge.

But some days, it will hit him hard. Some days he'll just get a sweet, sharp wave of craving that washes over him and makes him pause.

And good _Christ_, does Olivia hit that trigger in him.

It doesn't really hit him until she's been gone nearly 10 days, when the buzz dies down and everything is organized and running, and he can take a moment to sit in his office and just be quiet for a while. It will be a brief respite, he knows. Someone with more stars than him will call soon and chew him out just to feel like they're doing something.

The craving hits him as the peace settles, and he's never quite prepared for it, even if he's expecting it. Drinking never really allowed him to forget, but it allowed him to stop caring, even if just for a short while. He gives himself that moment to consider it, and he wonders if Olivia had that moment too. That moment just before she took the girl, where she hesitated between rising and falling.

If he knows Olivia at all, she definitely had that moment.

He shuts the craving down before it can get a foothold, and sighs, rubbing tiredly at his forehead. He worries about all of them, but Olivia has always hit something different in him. He's not sure why. Maybe because they've both been so affected by addiction, albeit in different ways. Maybe because she reminds him of himself, twenty years ago. Maybe it's simply because she's a woman, and he can't quite rise above the sexist part of him that thinks women need to be protected.

She has become a public relations nightmare for the department, and everyone between himself and the mayor of New York is throwing the blame on him. Maybe rightfully so. He doesn't see it as a matter of controlling his own detectives, but shouldn't he have noticed that she was slipping? Olivia has always been made of the strongest stone.

Sometimes it was easy to look past the cracks in her façade and see her as unbreakable.

Don glances out his office window into the squad room and watches Elliot stare at his computer screen. By all appearances, he seems to be doing okay, but Don isn't fooled.

He's also not an idiot. He knows there's a bond between Elliot and Olivia that goes deep. You can't be partners for over a decade and not have something close and intimate. And he realizes too that some of what's between them is very probably inappropriate and romantic, and they struggle with it. To be honest, he would have been surprised had it never been an issue.

It's something he's left them to figure out on their own, and mostly they've done that. Only once have they slipped so far that he'd had to take action, and the evaluator had laid it out for him in blunt terms: keep them as partners or lose them both. She'd had no advice to give him, just the bottom line of the situation. All or nothing. End of story.

He'd chosen all, and he'd never regretted it.

Still doesn't.

He can understand why Olivia did what she did, PR nightmare or not. He can empathize with how she got to that point. He can even take the hits from the brass as her actions reflect on him.

But he can't stand the thought that she's traded herself away, and it's getting harder to watch her partner thrash around in a public display of pain.

And all he really wants to do is to go back a few weeks in time and catch her when she falls.

[]

[elliot]

It's a rainy, gray afternoon nearly two weeks after Olivia disappears when he manages to lose his tag-a-longs and head to the Upper West Side. He can help Olivia best by simply doing his job, so he does that. And the IAB loses some steam with him. At least in their physical presence. He knows his phones will never be safe until she's caught.

Mostly though, he does his job, and it's easy to simply slip into a nondescript walk-up on W. 85th like he does everyday around the city.

When he knocks on the door though, he can't help the tangled knot of emotion in his gut. He's not sure if he wants to know or not.

The door opens and he looks up into Dean Porter's face, and Porter doesn't even register surprise, so Elliot asks, "Is she here?"

Porter doesn't answer at first, and he looks past Elliot down the hall, and then he opens the door wider and says, "No."

Elliot walks in.

He and Porter have a complicated relationship. Maybe even more complicated than either of them with Olivia. They barely know each other, but they are connected through the same woman, and there are emotions involved that make things… heavy.

Elliot knows about Oregon and what did and did not happen there. He and Olivia have talked about it, and there'd been no reason for Olivia to lie, nor did he think she would have even if there had been. But it doesn't matter how much she tells him about that time in her life, he wasn't there. Porter was. In a time when the feelings and the relationship between he and Olivia had been at its most volatile and convoluted, Porter had been the one to fight at her side.

And that's jarring.

She and Porter have a friendship and a relationship that is separate from Elliot, and it exists outside of his sphere in her life. Porter has a loyalty to her, and she's shown loyalty to him.

The Terri Banes case just brought it all to a head, something he hadn't even known needed to happen.

Elliot can admit when he's jealous, but it goes beyond that. Because he also feels grateful to this man for being there for her when he could not. And he resents the _hell_ out of Porter for the exact same reason.

It's not rational. He realizes this.

"It's okay," Dean says, closing the door behind him. "My apartment is clean."

Elliot turns to face him, and it's hard not to see him as a rival. He's tall and dark and handsome and he has feelings for Olivia. Elliot saw it when they'd worked together to save Olivia from Simon Marsden, before they'd realized she hadn't needed saving.

In the Banes case, the potential feelings between Porter and Olivia had been obvious, and he'd found the jealousy hard to hide. He'd forced Olivia to choose sides, knowing he'd win, and maybe that hadn't been fair. But he's never really been capable of being objective when it comes to Olivia. He thinks that she probably understands that.

"Has she contacted you?" he asks. He'd been torn on whether to believe that Olivia might contact Porter for help, but when he really thought about it, it made sense. Porter had proven time and again his willingness to circumvent the law, even while he fought for the greater good.

Porter hesitates, and Elliot takes that for confirmation, swearing under his breath.

"You shouldn't have come here, Stabler. You know damn well they're watching you. You're leading them right to me."

"I lost them."

"I guarantee you didn't lose all of them."

Elliot feels ruffled, and he tilts his head back a bit, staring directly into Porter's brown eyes. Dark, like Olivia's. Elliot is the odd man out. "I lost them," he says again, slowly and deliberately.

Porter holds his gaze for a moment and then shrugs. "Fine."

"You know where she is?" he demands.

Porter stares at him and then looks away and seems to sag a bit. "No," he says. "She came to see me for a favor and then she left. She didn't tell me where she was staying or where the kid was."

Elliot exhales, losing a bit of his bravado. "What did you do for her?"

Porter hesitates again, and Elliot feels his temper rising.

"Porter," he urges, quietly. "Come on."

"If she wanted you to be involved, Stabler, she'd have found a way. She's resourceful."

Elliot grimaces. "She won't. I have kids. She wanted to leave me clean." He swallows. "And I can't just let it go. It's…" He takes a breath, pausing, even though he has a feeling that Dean Porter might be the one person who understands. "Jesus… It's _Olivia_, you know?" It grates on him to be polite to this man, and to show his weakness, but he figures Porter already knows.

He hadn't exactly been subtle about it the last case they'd worked together.

Dean nods slowly at that, understanding, no smug smile, and it's both a relief and an ache in Elliot's chest. Whatever it takes to find Olivia before the IAB does, he can suck it up.

Porter tells him about Olivia and that she wanted a number, and Elliot opens his mouth, but before he can say a word, Porter says, "No, I'm not telling you what it is."

Elliot glares. "Why not?"

"She doesn't want you involved. Frankly, I don't want you involved either. This is my career on the line here, not yours."

That makes Elliot bristle. Makes him want to throw a punch and knock the fed's hair out of place. He can feel the anger surging upward from his gut into his throat. He clenches his teeth. He wants to grab up handfuls of Porter's shirt and growl _And she's my partner, not yours!_

Porter sees it, and Elliot feels like they're standing back in the squad room, during the Banes case. When they'd faced off, and he'd been so ready to fight, bouncing on his toes, willing Porter to just do it. Just say the wrong thing. Just come at him, so he could throw a satisfying punch into Porter's jaw. So he could exorcise the resentment of Olivia leaving him just when he'd needed her most…

Shit.

"Just…" Porter gets still and raises his hands, palms out toward Elliot, and he speaks evenly. "Calm down, Stabler. Listen."

Elliot keeps a rein on his anger, but it simmers and burns, and he watches Porter's eyes for any hint of duplicity. He isn't quite as sold on Porter's willingness to risk his career as Olivia might be. And she's not an idiot. If she decided to go to Porter, it was because she had no choice.

"She just wants to get the kid to a safe place, and then she said she's coming back to turn herself in."

That stops Elliot cold. "She what?"

Porter shrugs. "I don't know what she has planned."

Elliot mulls this over. He can buy that. Olivia wouldn't want to get anyone involved more than she can help. Especially if it was someone she cared about. Which explains why he and the rest of the SVU were off her list. But Porter…

"She doesn't have the number yet?"

"No. I'm going to have to access some files at work. I wanted to make sure no one was looking my way first."

Elliot nods, absently.

"In fact, it'll take a little longer now, because I'll have to make sure you haven't attracted any unwanted attention to me after this little visit." He's sarcastic.

Elliot narrows his eyes. "No one followed me."

Porter meets his gaze, unflinchingly. "We'll see."

"Why are you helping her?" Elliot asks, and he's not sure why it matters.

Porter shifts on his feet at that, glancing away, uncomfortable. "You know why."

Elliot looks away toward a window. At the rain running in rivulets down the glass. "Right."

The silence grows a little awkward, and Elliot asks, "How are you going to get the number to her?"

Porter sighs and shifts. "She wants you to move on," he says quietly, deliberately not answering.

Elliot slides his gaze to Porter's.

Porter holds his hands up again. "Her words, not mine."

Elliot takes a slow breath and scrubs tiredly at his face with one hand. "Olivia," he whispers, under his breath. "You're going to kill me yet."

Porter huffs out the barest hint of a laugh at that, and says, "Yeah." Like he knows.

And for one brief moment, Elliot feels his anger drain away, and something like understanding spring up between the two of them.

He hopes Porter is as good as he thinks he is. If only for Olivia's sake.

[]

[dean]

The records he finds on Hope Olson are completely outdated, and he figured they would be. A lot of environmental activists tend to wander from place to place for just that reason. He has to call one of his criminal insiders and get him to nose around a bit out in the real world. It'll take some time. And Dean will have to pay out of his own pocket, so there's no paper trail.

Shit. Talk about annoying. Benson has a gift in that area it would seem. He does start thinking about plans though.

He calls her once on the cell phone he gave her, and acts as if she's his cousin. "Hey," he says. "I haven't been able to find that book you wanted yet, but I'll let you know when I do."

"Great," she says, with false cheeriness. "Thanks!"

"How's everyone doing there?" he asks.

"Good, good," she says, like it's all just a matter of course. "Grandma's a little tired, you know."

"Yeah," he says. "She's been through a lot. How about your niece?"

"She's doing really well."

"I'm glad," he says, and then he hesitates, and, "Remember that guy, Joe, you used to work with in the city? I ran into him a few days ago. He asked about you. I told him you were doing fine."

She's silent for a moment too, and he waits while she works it out. "Good," she says, quieter now. "I liked Joe. I wouldn't want him to worry."

"Yeah, you know," he says. "You can't help but worry. You, uh… you have any message you want me to pass on? I know you two used to be close…"

He hears her swallow over the line, thickly, and he really, really hopes no one is listening in, because they are swinging so damn close to the edge.

"Yeah," she says, just a little bit hoarse. "Yeah, tell him…" She sighs. "Tell him I miss him, and uh… I wish things could have been different."

"Okay," he says, trying to sound cheerful again. Like it isn't a big thing. They need to end this now.

"Bye, cuz," she says, and she hangs up first. So he listens for a while, and nothing seems weird, so he hangs up.

Then he waits it out, because if anyone has him flagged and they listened to the call, he should know pretty damn soon.

[]

[elliot]

The coffee shop is barely busy in the middle of the afternoon, and he sits and drinks a cup of decaf and watches the people walking down the sunny street.

It's weird the way he keeps thinking he sees her.

All it really takes is a woman with the same hair color, same general hair style, and his heart nearly stops in his chest and then it thumps painfully against his ribs. It's never her though, and he's stopped being hopeful about it. But it still happens.

Cragen has started making noise about finding him a new partner, and really, he can't even think about that. He keeps brushing the comments off and avoiding the precinct. At least during office hours.

He takes the post it note from his shirt pocket and glances at it. The edges are already soft and fuzzy from his fingers. _"She misses you. She wishes things could have been different. She's fine."_

Porter had walked by him in the hallway at the One Six yesterday and bumped into him deliberately. Elliot had been gearing up to explode when he'd felt Porter's fingers slipping something into his pocket.

"Chin up, Stabler," he'd said with an arrogant smirk. "She can't run forever."

It had been deliberately antagonistic in case of spying eyes, but it had still made the growl rise in Elliot's throat.

His anger is gone now, and he's reread the little slip of paper a hundred times. He should probably swallow it or flush it or something, so it disappears, but he can't bring himself to cast it away.

He feels a lot like he's been frozen in time now. Everyone is moving on and he's still stuck, and he's just not sure what to do anymore. He never thought that Olivia would be the one to fall. He'd always been sort of subconsciously afraid of his own impulses. That one day he'd hurt someone, either accidentally or purposefully. He'd wondered too if Olivia would stand by him, or if she'd be disappointed.

Probably both.

God, he just wants to talk to her. One more time. It feels like they've both been cheated of something, like there should have been some notice that the shit was about to hit the fan. He can't stop going over and over that last day he saw her.

Damn it.

He closes his eyes briefly. The need to see Olivia is sharp and painful. The way he felt when Kathy kicked him out the first time, before he was ready. He'd managed that hurt in time, moved past it, let it go. He's not sure he can ever do that with Olivia. Not if she simply disappears and he never knows…

He opens his eyes and looks out the window, across the street. The agent who's tailing him that day is sitting in his car with the window rolled down. He's looking right at the coffee shop.

Elliot lifts his hand and waves, and the guy looks away.

His coffee gets cold.

[]


	4. Four

running on empty

[]

[dean]

He's pretty sure someone is on to him.

When he breaks away one morning to get some coffee, he keeps catching these flashes from the corner of his eye. He buys a huge cinnamon roll and it feels like someone is staring at him the entire time.

When he looks around, he doesn't see anyone, but that doesn't reassure him. His sixth sense is rarely wrong. If the NYPD or even his own agency suspects him, they won't be obvious about it. It wouldn't be him they'd want. It'd be Olivia. They'd make time for him later, after Olivia was put safely out of commission.

He spends a day working an older case. Something the CI he has working on Hope Olson's info would have been involved in. He isn't sure he has anything to worry about yet, but it doesn't hurt to lay the groundwork.

He knows for sure two days later when he's working at his desk and one of the agents on Olivia's case comes in and sits down.

"You worked with Detective Benson in that operation in Oregen, didn't you?"

Dean lifts his gaze to the agent's and the guy smiles pleasantly. And he knows.

"Yeah," he says. "And a couple of times here in New York. Any headway into her disappearance yet?"

"Well," the agent says. "First, it was a kidnapping, not really a disappearance, and not really, no." He smiles. "But we're working some new angles." He holds Dean's gaze.

Dean smiles back, and it feels like bending cardboard. "Let me know if I can help."

The guy nods, keeps smiling and then says, "Well, I'll let you get back to work." And he stands up and walks out.

Dean takes a deep breath. The guy was laying out bait. It means they're suspicious but they aren't sure, and they're hoping that by giving him a little rattle he might rush to cover his tracks and tip them off.

The thing is, he has very few tracks to cover, and he's always careful. Even about the innocuous little things. He doesn't trust anyone. There's a reason his success rate is so high.

But still… this complicates things.

[]

[elliot]

Cragen finally gets sick of his avoidance and gives him a new partner. Elliot wants to protest, vigorously, but the captain isn't having it.

"Elliot, you need someone to watch your back," he says. "And not just on the street." That makes Elliot pause, because he's not really sure what Cragen is saying, but Don isn't going to discuss it. "You two are partners. End of story. You don't like it? Quit."

He seethes over it, but there's also a curious apathy inside of him. If he can't have Olivia, then what the fuck does it matter anyway?

His new partner's name is Ed Holochek, and he's three years _older_ than Elliot. He transfers over from homicide, and he's had a stint in SVU before, so he already knows the drill.

"Sorry 'bout your partner," he says, the first time they meet.

Elliot eyes him up and down and grunts, "Thanks." But he doesn't smile.

When it comes time to clean Olivia's desk out, he takes the box from Ed and retreats somewhere far inside of himself.

Everyone leaves him alone.

The next day they're out on a call. Ed is seasoned and he takes notes and asks all the right questions, and he's decent to the victim, and Elliot at least feels like he doesn't have to baby-sit the guy. But working with someone else makes him feel restless and kind of sick to his stomach.

It's final in a way that he isn't prepared for.

They stop to pick up a few burgers for lunch and eat in the car while it pours down rain outside. He can only eat half and then he throws the rest away. He sips coffee instead and watches the water run down the glass of the windshield.

"You two were together for a long time," Ed suddenly says. "I know it's rough."

He doesn't mention Olivia by name, but it's obvious who he's talking about, and it's like a knife in Elliot's gut, twisting a bit. "Yeah," he answers gruffly, hoping his shortness will cut the guy off at the knees.

"You were really close, huh?"

Elliot slants him a warning look at that. He's already in a bad mood and this conversation is heading into edgy territory. He doesn't answer.

Ed shifts in his seat. "I mean, I've heard rumors..."

"I don't want to hear about any of those fucking rumors," Elliot snarls.

Ed lifts his hands, placating. "Hey, hey... I'm not trying to pass judgment."

Elliot holds his gaze, unflinchingly.

"I'm just saying I kind of know how you feel."

Elliot shoots him a vicious glare, and every muscle in his body is so tight, he feels like he might snap. "You don't know shit."

Ed stays quiet for a moment, letting him simmer and cool, and then he says, "Bout fifteen years after I joined the force, I was partnered with this woman in Robbery."

Elliot grits his teeth.

Ed shrugs. "I mean, it wasn't any big deal at first. I'd had a woman as a partner before her, and it was fine. We did our job, went out for a few beers, went home at night, and I never even had a dirty dream about her. But this one…"

"Can you shut the fuck up?" Elliot growls.

"No," Ed says, and his demeanor turns hard. "Why don't you fucking listen to me? I know you got no reason to trust me yet. The IAB is on your ass and they want your partner and for all you know they could have planted me with you, but you trust Cragen, right? And you think Cragen might have partnered us up for a reason?"

Elliot stares at him. Ed glares right back.

"Fifteen years into the force," he repeats, voice tight. "I was partnered with this woman. Melissa."

Elliot takes a deep breath and sinks back against his seat, listening.

"And there was just... there was something about her, you know? Something that really got to me. I don't know. We clicked. She was married though, and we were good as partners, so I just rode it out. And then the job got bad for a while, and we just..." He pauses, shaking his head.

Elliot glares. "You fucked and she got divorced and you split up and now you're teaching other cops about the danger of fraternization?"

Ed pins him with a mordant look. "No," he says, dryly. "We fucked, she got divorced, and then she married me."

Elliot blinks at him.

"Our ten year anniversary is next week."

Elliot stares out the windshield and rubs his fingers over his knee. "Congratulations," he finally says, flatly. "Is she in prison or on the run?"

Ed sighs. "No. But I wouldn't give a shit if she was."

Elliot shakes his head. Clearly Cragen would never cease to surprise him.

"I mean it. Shit. Inmates get married all the time in prison. Ted fucking Bundy had a kid in prison, and he raped and killed 30 women. All Olivia did was kidnap one kid to keep her away from her dickwad step-father."

"Great," Elliot says, sarcastically. "I'll plan our wedding while I'm waiting for her to be arrested. The time will just _fly_ by."

Ed sighs. "Look," he says, quietly. "I'm just saying… It's not the end of the world."

Elliot stares out the window and doesn't answer. _Maybe not_, he thinks,_ but if it's the end of Olivia then it might as well be._

[]

[dean]

His informant calls and wants to meet him with Hope Olson's number. He figures he can do the meeting without worrying about anyone tailing him, because the CI is one he uses a lot. If they ask where the paperwork is, he can just say the guy didn't have anything useful.

The informant gives him the number in a subway car. Dean slips him a couple hundred-dollar bills and tells him to forget about it, and the guy happily disappears again.

At that point, he has to stop and think. He hasn't had enough time to really establish who and where his tails are, and what, exactly, they think he might be guilty of. He doesn't trust his view of the situation yet, and he doesn't want to risk his career.

But… He thinks.

There's someone who will.

He has one last untraceable cell phone left, and it'll have to be enough, because anything he does from this point on is going to be seen by the FBI.

He takes the phone for a midnight stroll that night. Suspicious, yeah, but he isn't trying to divert all doubt. He just needs them to not be sure. To be confused. To not have enough to move on.

He calls Stabler and says, "I'm being followed. I need you to listen and do exactly as I say. If you do it right, there's a big reward at the end, understand?"

Stabler listens. And he understands.

[]

[elliot]

At first he thinks he'll have to ditch Ed in order to get Porter's plan into motion, but then he realizes that Ed can be valuable. And to be honest, he kind of likes the guy. They have a lot in common, and there's no drama. They talk sports and old cases and when Ed talks about his former partner and current wife, Elliot feels kind of… less desolate.

When Cragen asks him if they're working out, Elliot grunts in affirmation, and Cragen says, "Good." Gruffly. But Elliot sees him grin when he turns away, and he thinks, really, Cragen is a hell of a lot better than the brass will ever realize.

He does a search on his home computer the night before and looks up some books for Eli at the same bookstore he followed Olivia to the night she and Dean set out looking for Simon Marsden.

The next day, he tells Ed he needs to stop there on their lunch hour, and Ed looks at the magazines while Elliot walks around and gathers up the books. He grabs a coffee at the café and stands for a while reading the customer ads on a bulletin board in the lounge area. When he can put himself between Ed and the board, he pins up his own notice, written to Porter's instructions.

Then they go.

If Ed notices anything, he doesn't say so.

[]

[dean]

He calls her again. He isn't sure if the phone is still safe anymore, but it can't be helped.

"Hey," he says, talking to his cousin again. "I found that book you were talking about! Remember that book store we met up in a few years ago?"

"Yeah," she says. "I remember that one. It was cold out. They had hot chocolate."

"Yeah, that's the one. They have it there. I'd have bought it for you, but I forgot my ATM card."

"Eh, no problem. I'll get over there this weekend."

"Great. Hey, you should check out the bulletin board too. Someone is selling a Trek Soho. Didn't you say you and David wanted to start biking this summer?"

She hesitates, absorbing it. "Yeah, we did. I'll check it out."

"You do that," he says. "Say hi to grandma."

"Sure."

They hang up, and he takes the battery out of the phone and slips it into his coat pocket. He'll get rid of it tomorrow. He slips the second phone in his pants pocket and starts the long wait for Olivia to get the new number.

All he can do now is hope things fall in place.

[]

[elliot]

He's sitting in Jerry's pub having breakfast before work one morning when Porter shows up.

The sight of him makes Elliot feel simultaneous dread and anticipation. He watches while Porter buys a cup of coffee and then they make eye contact.

"What do you want?" Elliot says around a mouthful of eggs.

Porter slides into the chair across from him. "I sold my bike last night."

Elliot stops eating and lifts his brows. "Yeah?"

Porter nods. "Yeah."

Elliot takes a bite of toast, and tries not to look around to see how many people are near enough to hear them. "You still being followed?" he asks, quietly.

Porter nods. "Yeah."

"How you gonna drop off the bike then?"

Porter hesitates for a long time. Then he slides a five-dollar bill across the table. "Thought you could do it. I owe you."

Elliot puts his hand over the bill. When he glances, the bill is folded around a motel key card with a post-it stuck to it. He looks back at Porter, unable to hide the question in his eyes.

Porter nods slightly and smiles flatly. "Say hi for me."

"Thanks." Elliot doesn't know what else to say. His heart is pounding.

Porter takes his coffee and walks out.

[]

are you there?

[]

The motel is nearly in Jersey. Elliot gets there at seven, nearly two hours before the time on the post-it, and he's been a ball of tension all day long. Porter's act left him little to cling to, but there is only one reason for this room.

Is she going to show up?

He's nervous. He keeps an eye on the parking lot, but he's sure he wasn't followed.

He turns the television on and tries to watch the game, but his throat is dry and his stomach is flipping over and over…

He finally turns the sound down on the TV and takes the post-it out of his pocket.

There's a time, room number and phone number written on it, and he smoothes his thumb over the ink.

It's a risk, having it all written out like this, but at some point the risk had to become tangible. He's willing to carry it.

The room gets darker as the sun sets, and he turns on one dim lamp and he paces. If he stands to the side of the window, he can peer out through the gap between the curtains and the window frame and see the parking lot and the street beyond.

For one odd moment, he thinks about calling Ed, just to have someone to talk to and take his mind off things. Involving someone else though… Olivia didn't even want _him_ involved, and he's had her back for over a decade.

He isn't sure what he wants to say to her if she shows. If he really sees her again. It feels like it's been ten years since he's seen her. It's really only been a month. He doesn't know what to tell her to do. If he should tell her to come back or to run forever.

He just wants to see her.

Nine o'clock comes and goes, and he sits in a chair in the silence and runs a hand over his hair. If she doesn't come…

His stomach flips slowly, again and again…

At nine thirty, there's a knock on the door. So soft that he almost thinks he imagined it.

He stands up immediately, his heart lurching up into his throat, and for a moment he is frozen, halfway between drawing his gun and launching himself toward the door in case it's her.

He unbolts the door and swings it open, and even if they hadn't been bathed in the lights of the parking lot he would have known that it was Olivia.

The breath stops in his lungs.

She stares at him in surprise, and he hears her suck in her breath.

"Olivia," he says, because he can't help himself. And he is paralyzed at the sight of her.

He wants to grab her, shake her, hold her, kiss her, scream at her, laugh, cry… God. But she stops short and for one instant he sees fear on her face. She glances quickly behind him and then back toward the parking lot, and he has surprised her. She is not sure what to do and she is backing away and he is panicked.

She cannot leave when he has finally found her again. She can't, and he feels like he has one chance to get this right, and it isn't about thinking and planning. His heart takes over and he says, "Olivia, _please_!" with every ounce of the pain and longing he's felt over the past few weeks.

And she stops.

They stand there in silence, staring at each other, and he can hear them both breathing with ragged gasps, and he tries not to move, not to spook her, and how has it only been a month since everything was normal between them?

Finally, he sees her shoulders soften and she gives him a sad look and she says, "El…" so softly, and she shakes her head like he's the most stubborn son-of-a-bitch to ever live. And maybe he is. Maybe.

But she walks slowly past him into the room and he glances back outside for a moment, checking to see if things look okay, and then he shuts the door and turns the bolt.

He lets a long, shaky breath out.

She leans against the wall and looks at him, and her eyes seem to be everywhere, running up and down his body, meeting his gaze and then shifting far away, and he feels the same way. He's just hungry to see her again.

"I told Dean I didn't want you involved," she says, quietly, but she doesn't sound angry. She sounds resigned, maybe even a little amused.

"He was being followed," he tells her. His voice sounds rough.

She chews on her lip and glances away, and he watches the guilt shimmering on her face. When she looks back at him, "And you weren't?"

He swallows. "I've been behaving the past few weeks. It's easy to slip away when they don't expect it."

She lifts one delicate brow at that, and he can't prevent the corners of his mouth from tugging upward. Behaving. Him. Yeah, he gets it.

She sees it, and her smile tugs upward too, and it's not perfect, but it's enough like the old them to make his whole body sag in relief and shiver a bit, and he says, "_Jesus_, Olivia." Because it feels so good his knees almost buckle.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and then he's lunging toward her, and she stands there and lets him come.

He's had her in his arms enough over the years to know what she feels like, but this is different. This is like finally breathing after slowly drowning and he is holding her too tightly and he can feel the way her ribs press against his arms as she tries to breathe, but her arms are around his waist and her fingers are curled tightly into his shirt, and she is gasping into his shoulder. So he doesn't let go.

She stands with him, quietly, even as her fingers loosen and he feels the desperation taper off a bit, and he takes a few deep, mind-clearing breaths. He realizes, peripherally, that he has a hand on the back of her head, fingers in her hair, and he is dragging his lips across her temple. His emotions are not in the partner place but beyond.

He swallows them down and eases back from her.

Her fingers slide from his shirt slowly, and he wants it to be reluctance. When she meets his gaze, her eyes are wet. "I'm sorry," she whispers again.

"I know," he says, quietly, and his eyes are burning too. "It's okay."

And they might as well be back in that warehouse with Gitano's shotgun to his head. He stares at her and she stares back at him, and he can see everything she regrets. That she knew things were changing between them, and it had been okay, and maybe it would have gotten better, but she couldn't wait.

Finally he has to close his eyes to her, because it's too much.

Her fingers brush his bare wrist and curl briefly around his hand, and when he opens his eyes again she is staring at the muted television. When he looks at it, he sees Troy Watson's face on the news as the anchor talks about the case. It's followed by a still shot of Olivia and another of Grace, and Olivia walks slowly to the bed, sinking down to sit on the edge as she pushes the volume button on the remote attached to the night table.

The volume comes in low, and it's the same old thing they have on every night: Watson's smirking face and Olivia's haunting eyes and Grace's smiling second-grade school photo.

Olivia stares at the screen, and he moves around the bed and says, "I'm going to get him."

She doesn't react at all, and he sits down next to her, slowly. "I'm going to, Liv. Because when this all settles down, he's going to get jumpy and nervous and needy, and he's going to make a mistake, and I'm going to pin his ass to the wall and take him out."

He can hear her swallow, and she says, "Don't." She sighs. "You have to be there for your kids."

"I'll do it legally, but he's not getting away with this."

She glances at him, smiling tightly, and he watches the light from the TV flicker across her face. "I'm sorry," she says for the third time. "I messed everything up." And she means more than just her career or their partnership or Grace. He can see that. She means them. Them in a way that hadn't happened yet. And it's like a weight that he gives up from inside. Relief and pain that feels raw but good. He hadn't even realized he needed her to acknowledge it.

"Why?" he finally asks, his voice scratchy and low. "Why didn't you come to me? We could have found another way."

"Maybe," she admits. "Maybe we could have. Probably we could have. But I didn't have time. And it wouldn't have been enough. It wouldn't have been enough to save her, and I couldn't send her back and live with myself."

He swallows then, thickly, and he feels hot inside, like he's burning up. He touches her hand where it's lying on her thigh, and her skin feels cool. "I get it," he says. "I do. I just… I hate that you sacrificed yourself."

"I know I hurt you, El, and I'm sorry. But you can take the pain. Grace can't. I had to protect her."

He leans forward over his knees to press his fingers against his aching eyes. "Porter said you're coming back to turn yourself in."

"Yeah," she says. "Eventually." The news turns to talk about oil prices, and she turns the volume back down again. "When Grace is safe."

"I thought you'd… maybe you'd stay with her."

"It'd be too dangerous for her. They're looking for me and I can't hide forever. She'll grow up and change. The less you know about it, the better." She pauses, picking at a corner of her coat. "And I want people to know why I did it."

"They're going to put you in prison, Olivia."

"I know." She takes a long, slow breath. "It's okay."

"It's not okay!" he argues, suddenly angry.

She closes her eyes against his anger, bracing herself, but she doesn't shy away from him. When she opens her eyes, her gaze is steady and he can see that iron will of hers front and center. She is tired, but she is not broken, and she will go down swinging. "I don't regret doing this," she says, firmly. "I know the consequences, and I can live with them."

He doesn't know what to say. He just looks at her in the light of the television and he tries to understand.

"I didn't realize the press would pick you apart the way they did," she says, and her tone is apologetic, and he wants her to stop apologizing.

He shrugs. "You know my jacket. They were into me for about fifteen minutes and then they moved on."

"Your kids…" she starts.

"Are fine," he finishes. "You need to let me worry about them now."

She holds his gaze and then nods, slowly.

And it's quiet then, because he doesn't know what else to ask her. What else to say. He isn't even sure he knows how to tell her what he's feeling, because it's all a tangled mess.

"Did Dean give you the number I wanted?" she asks.

He feels the post-it warm in his pocket, and he doesn't want to give it to her. As long as he has it, she has to stay here. "Yes," he says anyway.

She looks at him, and he slowly reaches into his jeans pocket and fishes it out. She starts to reach for it, and he closes his fingers around it. She looks at him.

"Stay," he says. "For a while."

"It's dangerous," she says. "I should go before they figure out where you went."

"They won't know," he states. "And I don't care."

"Elliot…" And she looks worn down and vulnerable and too, too exposed.

"She's safe, right? For now?"

"Yes." Her voice is a whisper.

He puts his hand on the back of her neck, slides his fingers under her hair to settle on her bare skin. She breathes in and seems to hold it in her lungs. "It's safe," he says. "Stay for a while. Please."

He can see her giving in, and she looks so exhausted. When she finally nods, he has to physically restrain himself from embracing her again. He hands her the folded post-it and she takes it, opening it and staring at the number for a long time. Memorizing it. Then she folds it back up and slips it into her coat pocket.

"You hungry?" he asks, watching as she stands and slips the coat off and throws it over a chair. "I could go get you something."

She shakes her head. "I'm fine."

She walks to the window and leans against the wall next to it, peering out through the gap in the curtains without moving them. He watches her, silently.

She looks the same, but different, and he's not sure why. She's always struck him in the oddest ways. She's the toughest woman he knows, and yet she can seem so small sometimes. He's protective because she's his partner, but there is also some part of her that hits him deep, where he has no defense. He can see glimpses of her loneliness and it makes him want to cover her up. She gets agitated when she knows he's seeing inside of her-and when he strips his own armor away and she sees inside him-but he lives for those moments.

He wants her to love him.

Maybe he's always wanted that. Despite the job, and his family, and his marriage that she seemed to fight for harder than he did sometimes, maybe what he's always wanted, what he's always fought her for, was for her to love him. And when she got too close to that, he'd panic and push her away again.

He swallows. Hard.

She hears, and she turns her head slightly, her dark hair sweeping down in front of her eye. She pushes it back, tucks it behind her ear, and the motion is so familiar to him that it breaks his heart.

"You look tired," he says, softly.

She gives him a faint smile. "I haven't been sleeping much," she says, as if she figures he already knows.

"Me neither," he says, and she give him a look that seems to apologize and beg for mercy at the same time. "I'm sorry," he says, quickly, quietly. "I didn't mean…"

She just looks at him and leans wearily against the wall, and her shoulders look heavy. "It's really good to see you," she says, finally, and even her voice sounds drained.

He can't look away from her dark gaze, and he lifts one corner of his mouth in a token smile. "You too," he says. And then, "C'mon, Liv. Lie down. You're about to fall down."

She wants to protest. He can see it in her face. But he pulls the pillows from beneath the spread on the motel bed and says, "Just for a few hours. I'll keep watch."

And she just… surrenders. She sits on the bed and he helps her take her boots off, and then she just stretches out, almost painfully, with all her clothes on and exhales slowly.

Her hair is in her face, so he slides it back behind her ear for her, and she closes her eyes.

He turns off the dim light and sits in one of the chairs and he watches her sleep in the light of the TV. It's hard to breathe.

He feels her inside, down deep, and he thinks that, really, he's never going to be truly free of her.

And he doesn't want to be.

[]

She doesn't sleep well.

She dozes in small bits, jerking awake each time and lying stiffly until he says something or she realizes where she is, and then she relaxes back down again.

It's hard to watch.

The parking lot has stayed quiet and if anyone had managed to follow him they'd have had plenty of time to mobilize and burst in, so he figures, finally, that they really are safe. He'd been confident, but there was always that chance…

She makes him careless sometimes. No… She doesn't make him do anything. Isn't that what George said during the Gitano case? It's his own emotions that he can't control. That he can't resist.

He leaves the TV on, muted, but he pulls his boots off and eases onto the bed next to her. She stirs a bit but doesn't wake from her light sleep, and he stretches out on his side and watches her. In the changing light of the television her skin is sepia, the edges highlighted, the dips shadowed, and he has never pretended that she isn't beautiful. Not to her face, not to anyone.

She manages to look strong and delicate at the same time, and his fingers always itch to trace her contour. He idolizes her sometimes. He's pretty sure she doesn't know that.

Her breasts rise and fall with her breath, and he imagines pressing his fingers to her throat and feeling the heat there, feeling her pulse beat. He swallows.

He feels like she must have known from day one that he was attracted to her, but he doesn't really know. Early in their partnership, before they'd gotten so jaded and needed each other too much to fight, they'd been more antagonistic. Their battles had been loud and vicious and full of a sexual chemistry that they'd only acknowledged with long looks and wordless understanding.

Most of their feelings were shared unspoken. It makes it easier to feign ignorance. It makes it easier, period.

She shifts in her sleep and he listens to her quiet breathing.

It feels a lot like they are the only two people left on Earth.

[]

He dozes lightly with her.

He wakes when he feels a touch, and when he opens his eyes, Olivia is on her side facing him, her fingers deliberately skimming over his jaw. She still looks tired, but she looks more like the Olivia he has known for so long.

"What time is it?" he asks, thickly. It feels late.

"About midnight," she says, and her fingers slide slowly over his chin and catch against the stubble he knows is there.

He holds her gaze and doesn't say anything more, just wanting to feel her touch like this and afraid she'll stop. He wants to touch her back, but even this small motion on her part is more than they've had, and if it's all she's willing to give, he'll take it.

"You know," she says, softly. "I never wanted your marriage to fail."

He stares at her. "I know." And he does. He thinks that for a short time they might have both used his marriage as a convenient barrier. A way to escape the weight between them.

_She just touches him so damn deep…_

Her thumb slides over his bottom lip, and the air stills in his lungs. They are looking at each other, and _everything_ is right there.

She swallows at whatever she sees in his eyes, and her hand slips away from him, and he doesn't even think. He grabs her wrist and he keeps his gaze locked on hers as he pulls her arm back, places it around his neck, eases forward into her, and he rests his mouth right next to hers.

He feels her breath hit his lips, and she is suddenly nervous, but she doesn't protest and she doesn't move away, so he holds her arm around him and he presses his mouth to hers, and he kisses her.

Their lips barely move together at first, and he has to take a moment to control his own breathing, because he's getting light-headed. But then she tilts her head back and her lips part, and he sinks down into her with a wordless sound, because he can taste her. Her mouth is wet and warm and it doesn't taste like anything else but her, and he finally knows. Finally.

Her fingers curl into the back of his neck, and he releases her wrist and eases closer to her, sliding his hand onto her hip. Everything is slow: his mind, her hands, their mouths, the passing time.

When they break apart to breathe, she looks at him, a little startled. And he feels it a little too. The world has changed now though, and the rules are different, and time is running out.

He can see her thinking about it, worrying, and he says, "Liv." Quietly, because he wants her to know he is here and he isn't going anywhere.

Her hand presses against his nape, pulling him toward her again, and he goes. He dives and he pulls her down with him, and for a moment everything is frantic. He kisses her into the pillow and slides his tongue against hers. He puts his mouth on her neck and under her collar on her shoulders and he gets her skin wet. He wraps his fingers around the small, hard muscles in her arms and he lets his teeth graze her nipples through her shirt, and she arches up beneath him and moans quietly, and it makes him so hard he can barely think at all.

She pulls the hem of his shirt up, and her hands slide over his back, and he kneels up in the darkness and pulls it off. She has her hands on the button of his jeans even before he throws it to the floor, and when he twists to shove them off, she's already working on her own jeans.

She still has her shirt on, unbuttoned and showing him a strip of tanned skin, when he eases back down on his back, naked, so he can stare up at her, and she stops undressing and leans over him, her mouth brushing his. Everything slows again, and this has always been their rhythm.

He's had moments, after their fights, or after they've fought together against the universe and won, when he's been so hopped up and eager for anything that he's almost bounced on his toes and grinned at her and growled, "Let's _fuck_, Liv!"

And then ten minutes later she can plummet down and all he can see is how alone she is, how lost, and all he wants to do is protect her from the world.

She is exhausting.

And yet all he wants to do is dive in for more.

She puts a hand in his hair and her mouth on his, and then her other hand slides down over his chest, over his belly, between his legs, and she cups him there and he can't do anything except exhale a groan into her mouth.

It's a dream after that.

He moves and twists with her, and he feels like he's drunk. He slides his hands and his tongue and his whole body over her skin and she just pulls him in closer. He groans and whispers into her neck and she breathes faster. He slides his fingers between her legs and she's wet and warm, and then he slides his hips there and she presses her thighs to his waist, and then he slides inside of her.

She opens her mouth when he's as deep as he can go, bites her lip when he pulls out, and she whispers his name as he rocks back and forth. All he can hear is their breathing and her voice and his own groans, and he presses her down, presses himself into her and feels it.

She curls her fingers into his shoulders, maybe bites him a little as she's getting close, and he tries to breathe through it and keep himself from coming too soon.

When she comes, he knows it. She makes a wordless sound and she arches up and her nails dig painfully into his skin, and he can feel her getting wetter and it just destroys him. He comes so hard it's nearly painful, and he isn't sure he's ever going to come back.

He seems to stay there a long, long time, and she won't let go of him. She presses her mouth to his shoulder and he feels her heart beating.

They can't speak, he realizes. Because it's almost time for her to go, and talking will break it all.

Instead he turns his head and kisses her temple, then her jaw, and she swallows and lies still and he starts all over again. He moves slower this time, and he lazily explores. He turns her over and kisses down her back, his tongue licking over each bump of vertebrae. He buries his fingers in her hair and sucks at her nape, and eventually he gets hard again and she can take his fingers touching her again, and he slides between her legs and inside of her. Slow, slow, and he makes her come again while he watches the light from the TV flicker over her face and neck.

He comes long minutes after her, when she wraps her legs around his waist and she kisses him without relent, until he's out of breath and can only groan into her mouth and give up everything.

In the end he is exhausted, and she is renewed.

By three, she is gone and he can still feel her everywhere.

He turns off the TV and lies in the darkness for a while, and it feels a little like disappearing.

[]


	5. Five

[]

[elliot]

He sees Porter when he's sitting in the office two days later. Ed is on a coffee run, and they've been less than focused on paperwork, so Cragen keeps them both after court and makes them do detention.

Being with Olivia has assuaged him in some way. He hurts, but it's not the sharp, unbearable pain of not knowing.

He looks up and Porter is standing in the squad room's archway. He holds the gaze, and at the question in Porter's eyes, he gives a positive tilt of his head. Porter looks away, looks back and gives a tight-lipped smile that could mean anything, but Elliot chooses not to interpret it. Whatever Porter had with Olivia, it's never going to touch what he has with her, and although he's always known it, he hasn't always felt it.

The guy risked a lot to help her, and him by extension, and that's enough. They were different means to the same end. He and Porter will never be buddies, their only similarity is Olivia, and this is maybe an understanding that their time together is finished.

He feels some relief.

Ed comes back with the coffee and they work silently in an empty squad room while the afternoon passes, and he feels her the entire time: her mouth, her skin, her breath. But he thinks also, that they exist outside of this squad room, together and apart, and maybe he's always been afraid that somehow they wouldn't. That when the job was gone, their bond would fade away and she'd leave him with that painful splinter of her stuck way down deep while she walked away and never looked back.

"Hey," Ed says, stretching in his chair. "You wanna get a beer after work?"

He starts to answer in the negative automatically, because it's second nature by now. But then he realizes that maybe he does.

"Yeah," he says.

And later, it's the first time he smiles in over a month.

[]

It has to last him for a while, because the next day he's barely turned the coffee maker on when a woman walks into the squad room and asks, "Are you that partner of the cop who stole that little girl?"

He turns and eyes her warily and thinks it's way too early to be ready for anything, but he says, "Yeah. I'm Detective Stabler."

She sets her jaw and looks him right in the eye and says, "Troy Watson molested my daughter two years ago."

[]

It's a whirlwind after that.

Cragen decides the unit is too personally involved and he sends it down the line, but since Manhattan had the original Watson case, they still get to be in on it.

Elliot can't do any of the detective work, and his signature can't be on any of the reports, but they keep him updated, and he can work with Cragen to map out the case.

It breaks even wider when another mother comes forward, and then another and suddenly there are four little girls who have admitted that Watson got to them, and those fucking news reports have finally done some good. Four mothers who believed them and figured things out and decided Watson wasn't going to get away with it anymore.

When they get into the details, they have dates and times, cancelled checks and a parking ticket, a borrowed van with DNA evidence and a whole lot of victim corroboration.

He can't be the one to put Watson in handcuffs, but Brooklyn lets him come down and sit in the viewing room while they put Watson through the ringer. The pedophile isn't smirking now. He's agitated and worried and he can't keep his stories straight, and when the DNA comes back a match, he finally breaks down and loses it fantastically on the interrogation room floor.

For the first time in a long time, Elliot gets a good night's rest.

Grace's mother doesn't know what to do without Watson around, and within days of his arrest she gets drunk and pulls a gun on a bartender in the village. She's arrested with crack in her pocket and she pleads guilty and disappears into the system.

"Olivia did it," Cragen says, as they stand outside of the courthouse after Watson's arraignment. "If she hadn't put this guy on the news, no one would have come forward."

Elliot doesn't say anything then, because it's bittersweet. He's glad Watson has come tumbling down, but losing Olivia is such a steep price to pay…

Cragen squeezes his shoulder.

He goes out with Ed to celebrate and they drink scotch while they watch the news story over the bar.

When he goes home, his mind thick with the buzz of alcohol, he lies in his bed in the darkness and he misses Olivia and he doesn't even realize his eyes are wet until he tastes the salt in the back of his throat.

When his cell phone wakes him at 4 a.m. his head is spinning and his coordination is off and he nearly knocks the phone to the floor before he rasps a hello and Cragen's voice splits into his consciousness. "Elliot. I want you in Cabot's office by 5."

"Captain?" He's groggy.

"Olivia is turning herself in," Cragen says.

And he feels all the air rush out of his lungs.

[]

When he gets there, Alex's office is already crowded. Cragen is leaning on her desk, and Fin is leaning against the wall next to a woman who looks familiar but he doesn't know. The IAB is also there, and he exchanges a cold look with Lieutenant Tucker before glancing at Trevor Langan.

"I'm not a defense attorney," Alex says, as if he'd asked. "I took the liberty of calling Trevor on Olivia's behalf."

"She called Alex last night," Cragen explains to him. "With Grace's mother going away and Watson heading for life, she's bringing Grace back and giving up."

He isn't sure how he feels about that anymore. He is glad that she is coming back, glad that this will be over. It's what he's wanted, but now, with the painful evidence of how serious her crime is right in front of him, he's suddenly frightened for her.

"What's going to happen?" he asks, quietly.

"Sit down," Alex says, gently. "Let's talk about this, Elliot. You need to be prepared."

He swallows, but, yeah, he thinks he needs to sit down.

[]

[olivia]

She stares at Alex's office building with a lump in her throat. There are uniforms out front, and she realizes Alex has made preparations. They can't see her sitting in the car, and she watches them for a few minutes, trying to savor her last moments of freedom.

If you can call it freedom. The past weeks have felt like the most restrictive time of her life, to be honest.

It kind of feels like she's stepping back on land after being adrift in the ocean for years. In some ways it's a lot like the moment right before she took Grace, when she was balancing on the edge, ready to tip either way.

This time though, she is tipping back into the black, and although she will pay the price, Grace will finally be settled into a stable life. Alex has promised that vehemently, and Olivia believes her. It's the reason she called Alex in the first place. They don't always agree, but she knows Alex always wants to do the right thing. She trusts that.

"I'm getting Trevor Langan for you," Alex had told her, and she'd been too tired to fight anymore. She'd liquidate her assets and pay him. Despite fighting him in the courtroom too many times to count, her opinion of him had changed a bit last year.

Having someone defend you against a murder charge will do that, she supposes.

"Is this where I'm gonna live?" Grace asks from the back seat. She sounds fearful.

Olivia turns to look at her. "No, honey. Remember? I told you we're going to meet some of my friends. They'll take care of you. I promise you'll live with some nice people."

"I want to live with you." There's the hint of tears there, and Olivia doesn't blame her.

"I know," she says, regretfully. "I'm sorry. When you're older you'll understand."

Grace bows her head and cries quietly, and her easy acquiescence is a leftover from Troy Watson's horrifying control. She has learned not to rock the boat, because life is easier for her that way.

Olivia swallows as her eyes burn. She did the right thing. She did. She will always stand by that. But it doesn't make facing the consequences any easier. It just makes her more resigned to her fate.

"Come on," she says softly. "Let's go."

They climb out of the car and she takes Grace's hand and they walk toward the building. The uniforms see them almost right away and never take their eyes from them. When she gets closer she sees that she knows one of them, and as they pass, she gives him a faint smile.

"Good luck, Olivia," he says, quietly, as he pushes the door open and they walks inside.

There's a uniform on the elevator too, and she holds Olivia's gaze with an unreadable expression. The force is torn on her actions, Olivia knows. Some understand, some don't. Some think she gave all cops a bad name by taking the law into her own hands. She doesn't even disagree… She just had to make a decision she could live with. It was as simple as that.

Grace walks silently and passively beside her, and they walk down the hallway to Alex's office, and in the early hours of the morning the other offices are empty. There's a bright light spilling from the doorway of Alex's office into the dark hallway, and there are two more uniforms standing there, outside, watching her approach.

One of them sticks his head into the room and says something, and she hears the din of voices go silent.

She takes a deep breath and steps into the patch of light, and then stands in the doorway and meets them all.

The first person she sees is Cragen. He stands in the middle of the room and he meets her gaze with sympathy, but she can see a lot there in his eyes: reluctance, disappointment, understanding, regret.

"I'm glad you came in," he says, and then there's something close to pride there, and she just wants to break down and cry a little bit. "You talk to Langan before you say a word to me or Tucker, got it?" he adds. And she nods mutely.

Elliot is standing to the side, and he can't seem to help himself. He steps right up to her, hand curling around her arm, and he asks, "Are you okay, Liv?"

She nods, and he hovers nervously, and she can feel his agitation. The way he wants to act versus the way he has to act in front of Cragen and Tucker and everyone else in the room. She meets Tucker's steely glare with one of her own. In his eyes she's proven him correct, that she's been a dirty cop all along, but she doesn't care. She knows what she's traded. He can crow about it all he wants, it won't make her doubt herself.

"What now?" Olivia asks, softly.

Langan takes a seat across from Alex at her desk and motions to the chair next to him. "You sit down and we discuss it. Then we go to One PP and everything starts."

Olivia swallows and she looks at Don. "Take Grace away before you cuff me, Captain. Please?"

He nods his head and glances at a woman standing next to Fin, and Olivia recognizes her from the department of child services. Instinctively she tightens her hand around Grace's, but the woman is pleasant and gives her an encouraging smile before kneeling down to talk to Grace.

Grace answers, meekly, and glances at Olivia for permission, and Olivia kneels down to hug her. "These are my friends," she says. "You go with them and we'll talk later." She has no idea if they'll talk later or not, but she doesn't want to put Grace through a big separation scene. Alex will make sure she's in good hands.

Grace goes, reluctantly but quietly, and Olivia watches her with wet eyes and shaking hands. Elliot stands closer to her, putting himself between her and Tucker, and she's so grateful she could hug him right there.

Then she sits down to talk.

"I'm recusing myself as prosecuting attorney," Alex says. "And they'll accept, of course. But I think they've got a perfect case for second degree kidnapping. No harm came to Grace, and you didn't demand ransom."

Olivia winces.

"The fact that you're a police officer will have bearing though," Alex continues. "They'll want to make an example out of you."

"We'll make a deal," Trevor tells her. "They won't want a trial."

"Your career is over," Tucker interjects, and she feels Elliot stiffen beside her, but he keeps himself in check.

"I know," she tells him, and then she holds his gaze until he gives a faintly condescending smile and looks away.

"The press knows," Alex tells her gently. "They're going to be at One PP when we get there. You should be prepared. Your case has been very public, and the department needs to make a show of bringing you in. They need the public to see that they're taking care of their own problems."

Olivia closes her eyes, briefly and painfully. The fact that she's a problem to a department and a job that she loves is a bitter pill.

"No matter what their personal opinion of the matter is," Alex adds, quietly.

"Okay," Olivia says, and Elliot's hand squeezes her shoulder.

Tucker steps forward then. "Stand up," he orders. And there is a silence that falls over the room that stabs deep into her.

She takes a breath and then stands, and she feels stronger. It's out of her hands now. She's finished what she started and she's done what she set out to do. Now they can do what they need to do, and whatever happens is going to happen. It is all about taking her lumps now.

Beside her Elliot makes a wordless sound, and his hands are still on her, curling around her arm, his hand brushing hers, and she recognizes all the protective signs. He knows as well as she does that this needs to happen, so she can only assume he can't help himself. She glances at him, and his blue eyes are angry. Not at her but at everything else, and she says, "It's okay."

He shakes his head, disagreeing, but he manages to grit his teeth and take it, and Fin steps forward and tugs him away, but Elliot rips his arm out of his grasp angrily and goes to stand in the doorway alone.

She meets Tucker's stare, unblinkingly, and one corner of his mouth lifts upward, satisfied. Cragen moves then and takes the cuffs from him, and he's the one that cuffs her, hands in front, as she shifts her gaze to his.

"You have the right to remain silent," he starts, quietly, and his gaze never wavers. "If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

And so it goes.

[]

[elliot]

He feels detached from the rush of action around him.

The department is a whirl of attorneys and agents, press and brass. Olivia sits in an interrogation room with Langan at her side, and he is not allowed to view her.

They pull him aside to ask more questions too, but he knows Olivia will never tell them about his or Porter's or anyone else's involvement, and he sticks to his story. He goes home at night and lies, sleepless, staring into the dark.

He is relieved in some ways that it is over, but now a new fear begins. He doesn't like the feeling of her being so far away from him. So close and so far, really. He's always been able to protect her to a certain extent, and those days are gone now.

When he closes his eyes he can picture her exactly as she was at the motel: tired and bare to the bone, but still warm with the heat of her convictions. He can taste her mouth, feel her fingers on his jaw, hear her whispers.

She was always going to be the end for him, he thinks. There had always been a certain finality to their very first meeting that had puzzled him.

Maybe it's always been her.

[]

[olivia]

Trevor slides the paper in front of her, and sinks wearily into the chair across the table. Olivia knows both he and Alex have been up for days brokering the deal in time for her formal arraignment. His tie is loosened and askew and his jaw is rough with beard, and she thinks really, between he and Alex, she has a new appreciation for anyone involved in the courts.

"You plead guilty," he explains. "And you get the maximum of eight years. You serve four at Bedford Hills and then, provided you've been on good behavior and haven't committed any more crimes, they quietly release you. Hopefully the press has forgotten by then and people have moved on. You serve the rest of your sentence on probation."

She feels a bit numb. Four years is a daunting amount of time to be in prison, and she feels that prickle of panic, of remembrance, from Sealview. But four years is also getting off easy. Four years is often what parents get who abduct their own kids, and she was not Grace's mother.

"You serve the time in administrative segregation," Trevor adds, quietly. "Because you're a cop."

She smiles faintly. "Tucker agreed to this? I figured he'd want to parade me around a bit."

"Lieutenant Tucker doesn't have a choice in the matter," Trevor says. "The NYPD wants this to go away. The Mayor wants this to go away. It highlights too many of the system's weaknesses. If you go to trial, it will create too much of a buzz."

Olivia frowns. "Maybe I should plead not guilty then. Let them make a show of it. If it means things will change…"

"They won't, Olivia," Trevor says, softly. "The machine moves slowly when it comes to change. You did your part; you made them pay attention. You put them on notice. You've made something visible that people want to ignore. That's enough for now. A big trial isn't going to do anything except draw away from your message."

Olivia sighs and tilts the paper with the pad of her finger. "It feels a little like ducking out on Grace."

"You can't tell your side of the story to the world until the trial is over anyway. Take the deal, do your time, and say your piece. Then walk away and try to enjoy the rest of your life."

She meets his gaze. He has eyes as blue as Elliot's, and a kinder face. It is Elliot's familiar countenance though, that makes her ache. And he is her one regret in this whole affair.

"Can I see Elliot before I go?"

Langan nods. "I'll make it happen."

She signs.

[]

They won't take the cuffs off of her for their last meeting after her sentencing. Procedure. And she knows it well, but finds it pathetically unfair anyway.

"I'll be up to visit as soon as they approve me," Elliot tells her, quietly. He stands close, so the cops that surround them can't listen in, although they probably can anyway.

She wants to tell him to cut his losses and get on with his life, that she's lost now and he needs to move on. But she's scared too, and she thinks that having one thing to look forward to will help. "You need to follow up with Grace," she tells him. "You need to make sure she's never overlooked again." Grace is with foster parents, and Alex has vouched for them. It has always been the one thing that has made this all worth it.

"I will," he tells her, and then he puts his hands on her head, in her hair and he leans down and kisses her, and she doesn't even worry that Cragen is standing on the other side of the room. She kisses him back and draws the taste of him into her mouth so she can commit it to memory. As if she'd ever forget…

He hugs her then, and with her hands cuffed she can only lean into him, press her face into his shoulder, breathe his scent in. Feel his warmth. Maybe her emotions are closer to the surface than she realized, because she feels a lump in her throat and a burning, wet heat behind her eyes. She misses him, and she isn't even gone yet.

"You can do four years," he says quietly into her ear. "Standing on your head."

She isn't so sure, but she straightens her back and the officers pull her away and lead her out, and she only glances back once to see Elliot from a distance, and he is standing there alone, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders dropping, head tilted tiredly. And she thinks that maybe, finally, she has completely broken him.

[]

and finally...

[]

[elliot]

He gets stronger as the months go by.

Maybe because it's finally over and he knows where she is. Maybe because all the judgment dies down and the press finds new things to sensationalize. Maybe because Tucker isn't hanging over his shoulder anymore and Porter has disappeared into the federal ranks. Ed helps him box up Olivia's apartment for storage and keeps wisely quiet during the entire operation.

Olivia will see daylight again, and that keeps him afloat.

She's okay the first few times he goes to see her. She is glad to see him and she tells him she is fine. She is segregated and she can have books and an MP3 player. She has too much time to think though, and she's always been a woman who is about action. She doesn't like being inside of her own head too often, and he knows this about her almost instinctually.

After six months she starts to fade a bit, and he gets a little worried.

"Why do you keep coming here?" she asks him quietly one visit. "You have a life."

"You're part of that life," he says. Always was.

She frowns a little at that, and he can see her trying to reason out an objection. Something to roll over those years of partnership-and more-that are their foundation. He wishes he could touch her, but she needs to earn the privilege of a contact visit, and she hasn't been there long enough yet.

"You shouldn't wait around," she says. "I'll be fine."

He knows what she's doing. She's trying to push him away. She feels like he's coming out of a sense of duty or misplaced love, and he's not, but he understands why she thinks he is. If their places were reversed he'd be doing the same thing. They are alike in as many ways as they are different. "I can take it," he insists. "As long as I know you're okay and I know I'm going to see you again."

She looks at him then, and he isn't sure what he's seeing in her eyes. Worry, guilt, shame, disappointment. Uncertainty. Maybe fear. And that is not the Olivia he knows.

"Olivia," he says, and he leans forward so she can see his eyes clearly. "You have faced the worst assholes this society has to offer. You can _do_ this."

She keeps looking him right in the eye, but he isn't even sure she's seeing him at all.

[]

[olivia]

She is struggling.

Not because prison is hell, because it's not. Not for her. But it is horrible in a way that she can't define. It is starving her soul in way that she can feel, day by day, and sometimes she lies on her mattress and she can feel the time passing, second by second.

If she lies still enough she can feel the earth turning.

Sometimes she gets pictures in her mind of people in her life who are still out there free. She can see them living their lives, eating dinner, walking through the city, working cases. She can picture the streets filled with people, all of whom have different destinations, different lives, completely unaware that she is stuck in time, waiting for the earth to turn and count her days for her.

When she's outside, she spends a lot of time looking at the sky. Deep blue, with white clouds, and it's quiet here sometimes. So quiet she can hear her own mind whirring away.

They all visit. Cragen, Fin, Munch, Alex, even Dean, but Elliot visits the most, and she knows he considers her his responsibility.

She should cut him loose, she thinks. It would be the best gift.

He gets angry when she suggests it, and she always forgets what a stubborn bastard he is.

She thinks about not seeing him. She thinks about refusing his visits, and it's her right. But he has always been her weakness. He has always lived deep inside of her, and he will never willingly move. She knows. Maybe she's always been a little selfish when it comes to him.

She expects him to fade. They only slept together once. Under duress. She expects him to move on and that his visits will taper off, and when she's finally released she will walk away from all of it, her entire life here, and she will start fresh.

"I'm not going anywhere," Elliot says as she sits quietly during their visits.

She sighs. She doesn't know what he wants. Does he want to know he's helping? He is. Does he want her to fall in love with him? That happened long ago. Does he want to know there's a future? She is not psychic.

They stare at each other across the divide, and she looks at the slant of his mouth, the arrogant posture, the biceps that bulge when he folds his arms over his chest. It makes her feel as warm as she did that night in the motel. When they fell together finally. The reminder hurts.

It feels like it was a thousand years ago. She only really thinks about it when it's late at night and she is halfway between sleep and wakefulness. Then she can hear his voice, feel his hand on her bare back, feel the way his legs tangled with hers, and she startles awake, heart racing.

Sometimes she is so romantic…

"I can't promise you anything," she tells him.

He shrugs. "I didn't ask you to."

"It was only one night," she protests. She's trying to set him free. He's never been the sort to bolt.

"We'll always be something to each other," he says. "You know that, Olivia."

She knows.

[]

She feels awkward with him when she finally earns the right to contact visits. He hugs her, and she feels numb. Distant.

They can sit closer now, the way they sat for 11 years: at their desks, in the squad, on his front step while they made peace.

And she feels so far removed from him. He isn't her partner anymore, she thinks. He is just a man with a horrible job who fidgets when he's nervous and wears his heart on his sleeve.

But they talk.

At first just about the cases he is working, but then about more.

And she realizes for as much as they talked on the job, as well as they thought they knew each other, there was so much they kept in.

"I wish I could bring Grace to see you," he says. "You'd see how great she's doing."

That makes her smile, if only wistfully. The courts will not allow Grace to visit the prison. She isn't even supposed to write. "She needs to move on too," Olivia says, holding his gaze.

He stares right back, and for a moment she feels a shiver, like she used to feel when they fought and he'd get all intense on her.

It's gone as quickly as it arrived, but she thinks about it a lot over the next week, that spark of warmth.

[]

[elliot]

"Where were you going to take Grace?" he asks her once.

She furrows her brows and thinks about that, silently, for a long time before chewing her lip and saying, "When I was undercover in Oregon, I heard about an underground thing." She lifts her gaze to his. "I was actually going to tell you about it when I got back, so we could check it out, but then…" She sighs and digs with her thumbnail at the edge of the table, distracting her gaze. "I couldn't. I just… I wasn't so sure I wanted to find out it was real, because then I'd have had to put an end to it."

"What was it?"

"A network," she says. "Where one parent could pay to have their own children abducted and put into safety if they were being abused by the other parent and the courts couldn't, or wouldn't, do anything about it."

He swallows. "That exists?"

Her thumb stills and she looks him in the eyes. "I don't know. I called once but didn't talk to the person I needed to talk to. I was going to try again but then the news broke about the new accusations against Watson, and then I put everything on hold."

"You were going to turn yourself in when you got Grace settled?"

She nods, absently. "It was always about Grace, El. It wasn't about me. Well… not much. Maybe just in that I was so tired of sending kids back when we knew we shouldn't. And Grace's case just became the last straw."

"I'm sorry," he says, softly, and she jerks her gaze to his. "I'm sorry I didn't see that you were getting that tired. I was so distracted by my own shit that I just thought you'd bounce back like always."

Her eyes take on a pained expression, and he realizes how much they hate to see the other suffer. "It wasn't your responsibility, Elliot."

"You're my partner," he protests. He can't bring himself to use the past tense.

"Not anymore," she says gently, putting it into place for him.

"Then we'll be something else instead," he says. He wants her to know that he's not just walking away. This is a long-time thing. She will never be in his past. What he really wants to do is take her out of here and start the rest of their lives, together. But he's pragmatic enough to know that she can't promise him anything. That there are years before she will walk out of this place and she can't even promise him that she will be the same person.

She looks at him for a long time and then she looks away, silently.

She is fading from him, and he isn't sure what to do to bring her back.

[]

[olivia]

When he arrives with the pictures, she feels a sense of panic, and she isn't sure why. She doesn't want to see…

But he lays them out in front of her, and once she glances her defenses fall and she is eager to consume them all.

Grace is 11 now and starting to look lanky and coltish in that pre-teen growth. She is smiling and there is no pain behind her eyes, and in one of the photos she holds a sign that says "_Hi, Olivia. I love you!_" With a big heart at the bottom.

She stares and stares at that, and then she is sniffling, and Elliot says, "Her mother finally gave up all rights, and the Johnson's adopted her. She's seeing someone to work through the trauma."

Olivia curls her fingers against her mouth.

"She's happy," Elliot says. "You did that for her, Olivia."

"She isn't mad at me?" Olivia finally asks, and maybe there's been a lot that she's been trying to suppress.

"No," he says. "She had some rough moments when it was hard for her to deal with her own feelings about everything that happened, but she's getting it. And she loves you. A lot."

There are a lot of pictures. Of every happy moment in Grace's life. Her birthday, her dog, playing with her new sister, singing in her school program, grinning at the zoo, swimming at the beach. It goes on and on, and something is expanding inside of Olivia that is starting to hurt. There are so many happy moments, so many _normal_ moments, and she knows life is never all happiness, but this is a different girl than the one she led away almost three years ago. This is a girl who has gotten a second chance and is digging her way out of the shit she was born into.

Olivia feels the tears running down her face, and then everything kind of gets a little too intense and it all blurs on her and she is standing up and grabbing at Elliot, and he wraps his arms around her and she finally feels it all.

She can't stop the crying, but she presses her face into his neck and tries to breath him in and she says "Thank you" against his skin again and again, and he says something back but she isn't sure what. She just doesn't want to let go even though the guards are telling her to back off, and Elliot doesn't push her away.

They finally pull her away, but not before she kisses him, and he puts his fingers in her hair.

"I love you," he says, as she's being dragged back, and she says it back to him, because she's forgotten how to say anything else. And even though the guards aren't gentle, and they shove her to the wall to cuff her and march her away and she knows she will be punished and she won't see him for a while, she feels strangely elated.

Not because he is gone, but because it feels like he has stayed.

Like he's left some piece of himself inside of her.

[]

Living her end

[]

It's a bright spring day when she walks out. Like the day she ran, the breeze is cool and the sun is warm and she is suddenly a little apprehensive.

They let her out of the gate with two hundred dollars in her pocket and a bus ticket back to New York City, and she walks to the edge of the prison grounds and steps over and then stops. She knows the guards are watching her, but she takes a moment.

She doesn't look back, but she looks up, at the blue sky and the clouds and she is silent and still for a moment, feeling the earth turn.

When she looks forward again, she sees him. Leaning against the hood of his car, arms folded, legs crossed at the ankles, that arrogant tilt to his head that she knows so well. He pushes away and stands when he sees her, and she walks slowly toward him.

"I can't get rid of you," she says, when she gets close.

He lifts the corner of his mouth, his eyes scanning over her face, her hair. "I have staying power, Liv. I was married for 25 years."

She smiles, faintly, regretfully. "And yet it ended," she says, quietly. Maybe she feels some responsibility for that, regardless of the reasons. Maybe she always will.

"All marriages have problems," he says. "Look at you and I."

And she does smile at that. "Yeah," she says. "I guess. You always did like that marriage metaphor for our partnership."

"For better or worse," he says, and he touches her hair. Long enough now to tie it back. He picks up one strand and smoothes it through his fingers.

She looks up at him and holds his gaze. He has a few more lines around his eyes, but they're still that familiar shade of blue. She hasn't seen him in the sunlight like this for years. "Can we just focus more on the better for a while?"

He gives her a lazy smile. So very Elliot. "Yeah," he says, and he opens the car door for her.

She climbs in and it's the first time she's been in a vehicle for four years. She is suddenly eager to go, to get out of sight of the prison. Like if she waits too long they'll come back out and drag her back in.

Elliot slides into the driver's seat and starts the engine, but he doesn't drive. He sits there, and then he says. "Liv." And she looks at him because his voice sounds rough.

He doesn't say anything else though. He just leans toward her and slides his hand around the back of her neck and he presses his mouth to hers, and she makes a soft sound but she parts her lips and lets him slide his tongue against hers, and all the air rushes out of her lungs.

When he pulls away he still doesn't say anything, but he presses his forehead to hers and breathes for a while, and she lifts her hand and touches his neck, slides her thumb along the edge of his jaw. She can feel his breath and smell his skin and she can hear her own heart beating rapidly in the silence.

After a while he sits back up and puts the car in gear, and they drive away.

~end~

_To every life a light that shines,  
To every heart a beat that's true.  
Baby, you're my yellow summer,  
Baby, you're my winterblue._  
(winterblue - heather nova)

 

[]


End file.
